Freaking out on AI - is it unwarranted?

From left to right: Christine Chow, PhD - Vice Chair of International Corporate Governance Network/ Global Head of Active Ownership, Credit Suisse; llaria Chan, Chair of Tech For Good Institute; Jasmine Begum, Head of Legal & Government Affairs, Microsoft ASEAN & Emerging Markets

On Nov 21, in the middle of OpenAI’s theatrical boardroom drama, I shared the stage with Dr Jasmine Begum (Head of Legal & Government Affairs, Microsoft ASEAN & Emerging Mkts) & Dr Christine Chow, PhD (Vice Chair of International Corporate Governance Network/ Global Head of Active Ownership, Credit Suisse) to focus on the topic of Artificial Intelligence’s perils & promises. Thank you Temasek / Stewardship Asia Centre especially Joanna S. & Rajeev Peshawaria for the kind invitation. Grateful to The Straits Times' editor Jaime Ho for moderating our panel.

In life, we often fear things we don’t truly understand, such as AI. Some thoughts:

1.   “AI” is a huge universe. The concepts of Machine Learning (computers that can think with minimal human intervention) & Deep Learning (subset of ML when artificial neural networks learn to think using structures modeled after human brains) have been around since 1950’s. But Generative AI (neural networks able to generate new, original content such as art, audio, text by being trained to recognize patterns in datasets) came into spotlight only in recent few yrs with the advent of Wavenet, Progressive GANs, GPT 2&3, DALL-E and of course ChatGPT & GPT-4.

2.   While the progress of Gen AI may challenge many traditional professions such as writers, animators, video editors etc, it should challenge more the basic, repetitive tasks required in these professions, and not the complex ability of human reasoning nor the wisdom accumulated by human experiences.

3.   The “nightmare scenarios from science fiction where AI becomes conscious & either annihilates or enslaves humanity”, according to acclaimed venture capitalist Lu Zhang, is “unlikely”. Lu distinguishes between Intelligence (ability of solve problems) & Consciousness (ability to feel emotions) in her recent post.

4.   According to AI royalties such as Andrew Ng (co-founder, Google Brain) & Jensen Huang (co-founder & CEO, Nvidia), “AGI” Artificial Generative Intelligence (software/ computer that can display the intelligence of a normal human), though growing fast, is still years if not decades away from being able to surpass complex human intelligence. Jensen emphasizes in an article by Business Insider that “multi-step reasoning that humans are really good at, AI can’t do that.”

5.   In conclusion, to be less freaked out about AI’s threat to mankind requires us to be “Digitally Literate”. At my panel I suggested taking it a step up to be “Algorithmically Literate” so that we can be aware of targeted ads, news and misinformation. We must upskill our ability to critically think, and invest more time into building deep, meaningful relationships that can’t be replicated by machines.

🔷 Panel replay: https://lnkd.in/gxCgqYbD

🔷 'Deepening Digital Literacy through Algorithmic Explainers' by Tech For Good Institute : https://lnkd.in/gJkk5wRk