The Impact of AI How humanity can use AI for its own growth
artificial intelligence is perhaps
the most hyped yet most misunderstood
technology
over the coming decades ai is going to
impact humanity in ways
incredibly hard to imagine i am deeply
concerned that business leaders and
policy makers
are being advised by charlatans
masquerading
as ai experts decisions that a handful
of people are making
have the potential to impact humanity in
profound ways
and while everyone says they do ai when
you really scratch the surface you find
a worrying lack of understanding
of its capability and impact there are
two definitions of ai
the first and weakest is getting
computers to do things that humans can
do
humans are the most intelligent thing we
know in the universe
and over the past decade we’ve taught
computers to do tasks
traditionally only in the debate of
human beings machines can now correspond
in natural language
and recognize objects and images better
than us
getting computers to do things that
humans can do is a weak definition
because i’d argue
that humans are not that intelligent but
that’s a whole different topic
the stronger definition of ai comes from
the definition of intelligence
which is goal-directed adaptive behavior
ai systems are those that can make
decisions learn from their mistakes so
they can make better decisions
next time ai is creating exponential
advancements
making it more and more difficult for us
to predict the future
these massive exponential leaps taking
us to futures where
normal rules break down are called
singularities
for decades sci-fi writers have been
speculating about what these features
look like
some of you may have heard of one type
of singularity maybe even two
but i want to propose a framework that
captures six
singularities six points in time
where ai creates unforeseeable changes
to our civilization
the framework will be familiar with
anybody that studied business it’s the
macro analysis framework called pestle
p-e-s-t-e-l
pestle is an acronym of six words
political
economic social technological
environmental and legal for each one
i want to explain how a.i could have an
exponential
impact on humanity so let’s start with
political
the political singularity is where we no
longer know what is true
ai allows us to generate images audio
texts
so convincing that it threatens the
fabric of our reality
these technical advancements are being
driven by immersive games
realistic social media filters and the
automation of human tasks
ai was recently used to mimic the voice
of a ceo
to instruct their accounts department to
pay an invoice
it can simulate political leaders to
deliver public announcements that have
catastrophic consequences yet give the
same political leaders an opportunity to
excuse
their real misdeeds as fake news
ai is used to target us with fraudulent
content to reinforce
our prejudices and entrench our bigotry
social media platforms have been
weaponized to polarize and manipulate
our voting behavior
political parties will continue to use
ai to corrupt our sense of right and
wrong
creating false enemies to divide us and
making false promises to conquer our
hearts and minds
some people might argue that we’re
already living in a post-truth world
there are people i know who deny the
authenticity of
any content that doesn’t agree that with
their opinion
this phenomena has sent shock waves
across political systems and has
destabilized nations
corrupt individuals will continue to use
these technologies to amass
wealth and power and i’m not convinced
that global regulation is enough or even
possible to stop them
one antidote is to use ai to depolarize
us
to proactively encourage conversation
collaboration and critical thinking
we could use ai to battle misinformation
bots and help
pop our social bubbles ai could
challenge our own dogmatic views and
enrich our understanding of each other
and the world around us so let’s now
turn to the economic singularity which
was coined by a good friend of mine
callum chase the economic singularity
is when a.i automates the majority of
human labor
ai is freeing us from mundane tasks
allowing us to do more useful and
interesting things
but the commercial drive to reduce costs
means that
ai will increasingly remove whole jobs
if the pace of automation outstrips how
quickly we can retrain or create new
jobs
then we will experience mass
technological unemployment
more and more of us will become gig
workers picking up granular tasks that
ai
can’t automate governments need to
prevent the exploitation of those
flexible workers by introducing new
employment protections and for those of
us who can’t find work governments need
to put in place
frictionless re-skilling and welfare
support
however if we got the time right we
could actually create
a world abundance ai can take the
friction
and cost out of the production of all of
the goods that we depend upon
we could create a world where our energy
nutrition health care
education shelter are all free a world
where everyone is economically free to
pursue happiness for themselves
and for others the social singularity
is when we cure death some people call
this singularity
the methuselah for millennia
immortality has been pursued by
explorers and emperors sorcerers and
scientists
it’s now the turn of the tech tycoons as
we go through our life our bodies
accumulate damage
for most of us death comes when damage
causes one or more
critical organs to fail ai enables us to
monitor our health with evermore
accuracy it’s accelerating our ability
to
identify issues prescribe treatments and
conduct operations
and it’s even helping us push the
boundaries of our understanding of
medicine
that means that we can not only slow
down aging but potentially
reverse it ray kurzweil who popularized
the term singularity
is a massive advocate of longevity he is
one of a growing community of people who
believe there are people alive today
who don’t have to die imagine how
differently you would live your life if
you were immortal
what would the impact on our social
systems be if we didn’t have to die
how would we approach education how do
we what would we do for a career
and how would we structure our
relationships and families
the technological singularity is one
that many of us will be aware of
it’s where we create an ai smarter than
ourselves
this super intelligence could be the
last invention that humanity creates
some people think it’s the most glorious
thing that will happen to us others
think it’s our biggest
existential threat almost two decades
ago when i was doing my phd
i was trying to understand how to solve
intelligence without really thinking
deeply about the consequences
yet this is still the stated goal of
many industrial and academic ai labs
across the globe
ai researchers understand the risks but
for many
the intellectual pursuit is just too
tantalizing
it’s incredibly naive to expect a
silicon god
even one of our own creation will want
to take care of us we might as well
ask aliens to come and rescue us from
ourselves
when the technological singularity
happens i believe
that our only hope is to show it that we
are not a threat
and that means we need to stop fighting
each other over petty things
and start cooperating as one global
species
the second e in pestle is environmental
the environmental singularity is
uncontrollable ecological collapse
ai is accelerating the mass production
and distribution of goods
which on the one hand is enabling us to
live richer healthier happier lives
but on the other hand human consumption
is putting extreme pressures
on our planetary boundaries farming is
driving antimicrobial resistance
clothing prediction is creating an
impending water crisis
transportation is accelerating climate
change and our waste is polluting the
oceans
companies are realizing that having
sustainable
circular supply chains is now not enough
we need to prioritize regeneration as
our industrial and economic driver
instead of
unsustainable exponential production and
whilst we’re waiting for aliens to come
and save us
it’s all of our responsibility to hold
leaders accountable
to putting people and planet ahead of
profit
the final word in pestle is legal
the legal singularity is when
surveillance becomes ubiquitous
ai is being used to track individuals
and corporations
our digital footprint allows
organizations to know us better than
ourselves
these insights are not just used to
suggest what goods we might enjoy
but are used to police and prosecutors
ai is being used to predict and prevent
crime
before it happens a bit like in that
film minority report
how would you feel if tom cruise
arrested you for a crime
you didn’t know you were going to commit
some nations
even use ai to publicly score the
productivity of their citizens
those who control what the algorithm
rewards and punishes
also control the masses ai could
eliminate eliminate
all illegal activity but at what cost to
privacy freedom expression and
creativity
regulation needs to move faster than
technological progress to ensure that
the rights of the individual
are balanced with those of the society
so let’s just recap the political
singularity is when we no longer know
what is true
the economic singularity is when a.i
automates the majority of human labor
the social singularity is when we cure
death
the technological singularity is when we
create a super intelligence
the environmental singularity is when we
trigger uncontrollable
ecological collapse and the legal
singularity
is when surveillance becomes ubiquitous
whilst it’s hard to see beyond each of
these singularities it’s even more
complex
if several happen around the same time
george orwell’s
1984 is an incredible depiction of both
the
legal and political singularities a
surveillance state
in a post-truth world and many people
believe that
these singularities will happen within
our lifetime
like any technology ai is neither good
or bad
it’s how it’s used that determines the
outcome
the pestle of singularities are outcomes
of an incredibly
complex global system a system currently
driven to
maximize production and profit remember
the definition of intelligence
goal-directed adaptive behavior ai does
not set the goal
the goal is set by our intent the
hardest part is setting goals that don’t
have
a negative impact to humanity it’s
easy for us to label business and
political leaders as
corrupt and self-interested most of the
ones i know have a deep concern about
humanity and a desire to make people’s
lives better
they’ve achieved their success through
tenacity and hard work and their ability
they’re smart enough to understand the
boundaries of their capability and they
surround themselves by people
who bring diverse perspectives however
ai is enabling a handful of people to
accumulate a disproportionate amount of
wealth and power
and we incorrectly reflect that wealth
and power as a measure of their
intelligence
they position themselves as having
superior intellects and some are deluded
enough to believe it
instead of being humbled by their
limitations they are clouded by
intellectual hubris and they surround
themselves by cronies and sycophants
achieving their goal is more important
than the destruction that they create in
their wake
we can’t afford for bad outcomes to
happen before we introduce
new laws and regulation because by the
time these singularities come
it will be too late to mitigate some of
the irreversible outcomes governments
need to do
much better at measuring progress than
blunt instruments like gdp
companies need to be genuinely putting
purpose as important as profit
but crucially we as individuals need to
hold them both accountable
and we can do this by raising everyone’s
awareness about the safety and ethical
challenges surfaced by
ai ai safety and ai ethics are used as
marketing buzzwords
to give the illusion of expertise
distinguishing ai safety and ai ethics
from already well-established technology
governance frameworks
makes no sense technology and ethics
frameworks need to be enriched and
extended
to take into account ai and as ai
becomes more and more ubiquitous
these frameworks need to be accessible
to everyone to understand and use
safety concerns itself with ensuring
systems
don’t cause harm software and hardware
already have
rigorous safety methodologies that have
been developed over decades
paradoxically promoting ai safety
separately is not only misleading but
it’s dangerous
the nuance is that some ai systems are
taught
instead of engineered training software
usually is more complex
and is prone to bias which requires much
more robust testing
once an ai is trained we typically don’t
know how it behaves the way it does
so there’s a huge amount of investment
into understanding how an ai
currently makes its decisions the other
type of ai are so complex
they have totally unpredictable and
adverse side effects let me let me give
you a thought experiment to ponder
imagine you’re on the ethics committee
of a ride hailing company
several months ago your company deployed
an ai to automatically set
search prices with the goal to maximize
profit
you’ve just been told that the ai worked
out customers will pay
more when their phone battery battery is
very low ai is making the company huge
amounts of money
but by exploiting people’s vulnerability
what do you do in this situation
ethics is the study of right and wrong
when considering any decision whether
made by ai or not we need to ensure
fairness and equality there are already
well-established processes to
scrutinize ethical decisions in fact ai
ethicists should call themselves
ethicists
and then ask themselves honestly if they
can live for that title
ais are making increasingly complex
decisions
so ethical frameworks need to ensure
that the ai’s design and intent are
transparent
they need to ensure that the data and
methodology used to implement ai
is auditable we need to be able to
explain how the ai
is making its decisions and we have
accountability across the entire
development process we are at an
incredibly
exciting and pivotal moment in human
history
a moment where we will experience
exponential effects of ai
the decisions that each of us are making
are contributing to these
irreversible futures if we are
conscientious then
ai could help us create a fairer and
freer society a world
of abundance where the whole of humanity
can prosper and thrive
and it’s in the hands of all of us to
make that world a reality
thank you for listening