With so much going on in the world of artificial intelligence, many people are asking for some kind of risk/benefit analysis – how much good will these new technologies do against the potential harms?
It’s clear that artificial intelligence is helping people in a number of fundamental ways. In healthcare, it’s helping with diagnosis. It’s also making people more productive. In general, AI is facilitating access to information, and in education, it’s offering us the ability to have individual tutoring, coaching and mentoring. AI will be very useful to people in more ways than one. (If you want examples of any of these positives, check out this page from the World Economic Forum).
But there’s also some skepticism when it comes to its overall impact, and people are looking at specific risks.
That’s part of why MIT is putting together a forward-thinking research program and symposium on how we can get humans to thrive in the age of AI.
Addressing Issues
Event materials explain some of the major concerns, and I’ll break them down here with a little context.
Over-reliance on AI – will people start to cede too much responsibility to these models?
Manipulation and misinformation – will AI spread false information or factually inaccurate ideas?
Dependence and loss of skills – as AI becomes more creative and capable, do human skill atrophy?
Unhealthy emotional attachment – will we know how to safely interact with capable and sentient AI?
All of these questions deserve some attention, and demand that various stakeholders come together to solve these problems.
Aspects of AI’s Impact
The creators of this event have also staged some interesting categories of discussion and presentation that go into different dimensions of the human impact of artificial intelligence.
I’ll go over these as well.
First, there’s our interior life, in the words of the planners, our “personal growth and emotional well-being.”
There’s our social life, and the life of a community, as well as our vocational lives, where job displacement and shifts are key concerns.
There’s a human’s cerebral life, where we look at capabilities like critical thinking, learning and intellectual growth.
And last there’s our creative life, where we consider people applying human creativity to business and personal goals.
In each of these, we’ll see the imprint of AI, and we’ll see it on a deeper level relatively soon.
Speakers and Presenters
In terms of speakers, the MIT program has a deep bench.
Notable author Doug Rushkoff is on board, along with Microsoft’s Jaron Lanier and Ariana Huffington of HuffPost fame. There are also numerous other speakers from MIT, Harvard and Cornell presenting at the symposium, and an array of professionals and experts who can lead us into asking those deeper questions.
How will AI affect us emotionally? How will it affect our jobs? What can we expect as we move forward?
In past conferences and events, I’ve seen people tackle these questions with a pretty impressive tenacity. We have to be forward-thinking if we want to deal with the biggest innovations that we’ve seen in our lifetimes. The hockey stick projection of technology advances is real, and exponential change will revolutionize our ideas of the world around us. So the earlier we get started, the better. This April event promises to bring sorely needed analysis to what we’re all working on right now.