Thread by @wavesblog

PCAST: Discussion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Enabling Science and AI Impacts on Society

"Inflection point"

"LLMs are just the beginning"

...and coming for the physical world

"AI can augment humans" [starting asking: which ones and why? WB]

"Profound social impact" - propagate issues we had for centuries [well beyond known biases: important but not a red herring]

...and then "free-riding" ;-) on work done by the European Commission back in 2018

Big issues indeed: industry dominates AI talent acquisition and development; consolidation of industry dominance also because of the necessary computation needs (latter was a hot topic in Teramo last week as well 😉dropbox.com/s/rh7ued1ho2wh…]

That “What can we do” Q. - I guess the A very much depends on whom you ask [public-minded innovation sure but incentives? The Chat helping you out when cancelling your NYTimes sub is a bad example IMHO bc similar dark patterns should just be banned under consumer protection law]

“I think we need to rethink what we want from AI, which is inseparable from rethinking AI” @DAcemogluMIT

[The most down-to-earth concerns about AI heard so far came from guess whom? An economist!]

Humans v. Big Tech’s business models and dystopian LLM visions?

[Agreed: we cannot become more productive if we receive advice that we don’t understand 😳]

Social scientists’ necessary albeit inconvenient role here: spreading the bad news 👇

“A big shock will be necessary” @DAcemogluMIT - and, IMHO, it’ll need to go beyond “Rethinking AI”: it’s about the computational ecosystem more generally (ok: me obsessing with cloud computing since last week’s presentation)

Worth mentioning is also the [total] absence of the public agenda setting role in digital technologies so far (not just innovation, but what type and direction of digital innovation do we want?)

Worrying: centralisation of data, and LLMs could amplify that @DAcemogluMIT - big elephant in the room (would’ve been good question for the incensed Google on the first panel)

[Is there a German word for unresolved problems of the digital past becoming worse in a new tech cycle?]

💯agree with an economist 😊: we need an holistic discussion on how science and technology are evolving if left on their own devices

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