Should You Worry About AI?
Is it getting dangerous?
Recently there is this article/interview that went viral and it exercised my neck (through furious nodding) and my brain, as it gave me perspectives to think about in my pursuit of “Intelligence”. Rodney Brooks, the former Director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) was interviewed in this article, to get his thoughts on these Large Generative Models and also Driver-less Cars (A topic that I enjoyed exploring from a society and adoption perspective). I strongly recommend my subscribers to read this if you have not done so.
There are a lot of worries right now since the emergence of Large Generative Models (LGMs) that jobs will be replaced or humanity is doomed as we created a tool that might just eliminate us (this sounds so familiar it is like a broken record)!
Let me address whether AI is dangerous, right now and in the near future. Firstly, AI is a tool! What are tools? From past history till now, tools have been developed and deployed by humans and animals because we lack certain competence. These tools help us to mold our environment and resources to enable us to survive and live better. Might I remind you about calculators, computers (both hardware and software), smartphones are tools too, computation and memory tools, to be exact. AI is similar! :)
Look what happened to the chess world now, players are now using AI to better themselves and to learn about their strengths and weaknesses. 1
What is more important right now is regulations and enforcement. Like any tool it can be subjected to abuse and thus the “dangerous” part. We need to regulate the usage of these tools, to reduce the risk to the lowest foreseeable level, while still enjoying its benefits to the majority of the folks to want to do good for humanity.
Meanwhile, I will strongly urge my subscribers to spend more time understanding what AI is underneath the hood. Do not solely listen to me, seek out more information, critically think through them and make your own.
What are your thoughts? Please share them in the “Comments”! :)
Recommended Content
Here is the article that I’ve read that inspired this Newsletter, the interview with Rodney Brooks. <Interview>
As mentioned, the long form of the previous newsletter is out and I discussed in more detail on Generative AI. <Blog>
Ever heard of “Federated Learning” and how it improves privacy while still creating better machine learning models? Check out this podcast! <Podcast>
If you are interested in the landscape of AI, this is a book I will recommend to understand the recent development history of AI. There are some parts of the book I do not agree with but I felt it still shared a detailed look at AI. <Goodreads>
https://www.engadget.com/alphago-pushed-human-go-players-to-become-more-creative-231703950.html