Most newspapers, periodicals and blog sites are filled with articles about AI. No other new technology has captured the imagination of humanity as much as AI has, perhaps helped by its predecessor technologies of the internet and social media. Therefore, there isn’t a week where we go without featuring one on the subject here in the 3L&3S. This week though, we featured a different type of article on AI. It is a survey of sorts by the New York Times of eight renowned experts from across academia, research and industry. Amongst them are Carl Benedikt Frey, professor of AI at Oxford, Yuval Noah Harari, the historian and author and Aravind Srinivas, the co-founder of Perplexity.
They are asked various questions about AI and its future. We feature some we found interesting here:
What is your biggest bet about the future of A.I. in five years?
Whilst Melanie Mitchell, a computer scientist reckons “A.I. won’t have cured cancer or solved physics. Also, no one will consider the ability to converse fluently a definitive sign of intelligence.”, Nick Frosst, an AI start up founder believes “A.I. will become boring in the best way. It’ll fade into the background like GPS or spreadsheets, powering everyday tools and humans at work. It’s the most banal use cases that have the most transformative impact.”
What will A.I.’s impact be on medicine in the near term?
Nick Frosst: “A.I. will absolutely increase the effectiveness of doctors by reducing their workload per patient in areas like the ability to quickly review their medical histories, effectively organize new medical information and identify potential problems earlier.
But while A.I. is extremely good at analyzing huge amounts of data and finding answers and useful patterns, it is really bad at coming up with entirely new ideas. The idea that A.I. is likely to autonomously create new medicines, for example? People will probably be disappointed.”
What will A.I.’s impact be on scientific research?
Aravind Srinivas: “As A.I. increasingly contains more of the world’s knowledge, it becomes an even more powerful tool for anyone with questions. Humans have always been great at having questions. A.I. will be great at having answers.”
What will A.I.’s impact be on education?
Helen Toner, AI policy researcher: “Education was already due for a significant shake-up, so the need to adapt to new A.I. tools might be a blessing in disguise.”
What will A.I.’s impact be on mental health?
Nick Frosst: “A.I. chatbots offer scalable support for mild symptoms but they’re no substitute for human therapists. The technology struggles with nuance, cultural context and long-term emotional depth. There are many mental health care challenges that should be handled by human professionals.”
What will A.I.’s impact be on art and creativity?
Yuval Noah Harari: “In more and more fields, A.I. proves to be more creative than humans. Any creative activity that boils down to finding patterns and breaking patterns is likely to be taken over by A.I.”
What’s one misconception about A.I. that you think is worth dispelling?
Yuval Noah Harari: “A.I. isn’t a tool entirely under human control — it is an agent that can make decisions and invent ideas by itself. While I don’t think A.I. will become conscious in the near future, it is highly likely these models will be able to simulate consciousness very effectively, causing a significant percentage of humanity to believe they are conscious.”
How likely is it that we will see A.G.I. in the next 10 years?
Nick Frosst: “A.G.I. requires abstraction, self-awareness and transfer learning across domains — all capabilities that are nowhere near. The architecture of the human brain is still a black box, and computing paradigms aren’t designed for it. Possible in 50 years? Maybe. In 10? Unlikely.”
What’s a technology that had a transformational impact similar to A.I.?
Whilst experts chose social media, PC, internet, agriculture, language, steam engine as answers, Aravind Srinivas says “There is nothing like it. We have no precedent. A.I. is best as a tool that empowers the human search for wisdom. History is full of such tools, but what makes A.I. unique is its ability to contain so many answers about the world right here around us.
In the short term, many of the world’s answers are locked away in certain industries, or only passed among elites. A.I. changes that.”
What advice would you give a high school student about how to think about A.I. and prepare for the future?
Yuval Noah Harari: “This is the first time in history nobody has any idea what the world will look like in 10 years — what the job market will look like, what social relations will look like, et cetera. So hedge your bets. Don’t focus on a narrow subject like coding. Give equal importance to your head (intellectual skills), your heart (social skills) and your hands (motor skills). It is in the combination of these three that humans still have a large advantage over A.I.
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