AI’s biggest problem mirrors America’s largest societal problem: polarization.
But in AI’s case, it’s the polarization between the doomerism that AI will destroy most jobs or lead to the destruction of humanity on the one hand, and the utopian vision that it will “solve for abundance” and bring an end to all human diseases on the other hand.
That’s what AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li asserted on Wednesday during the marquee keynote of the Ai4 conference in Las Vegas. Li shared the stage with Geoffrey Hinton and Andrew Ng, who spent much of their time bickering over AI’s founding narrative. Meanwhile, Li kept dropping gem after gem of wisdom about how humanity can best think about AI in order to move it in the most constructive direction for society.
The central insight Li emphasized was that the dialogue around AI has become too bifurcated between the extremes of the doomer and utopian narratives and has lost all nuance. Li encouraged the 12,000 attendees at North America’s largest AI conference to think about AI with a more mature perspective that makes room for shades of gray and trades philosophy for pragmatism.
Li said the way to accomplish that is to give a lot more people easier and better access to learning about AI.
“Please treat AI as a tool that can add to agency, add to motivation,” said Li. “After being an educator and parent for so many decades, I can tell you, when a human… a little human or a grown up human, when they are motivated they can learn and become the better version of themselves.”
However, while Li advocates a much more humane approach to AI through education, she does not believe the answer is a slowdown, a point that Hinton agreed with. She said we can’t put the genie back in the bottle.
“Every technology is [like] a genie,” she said. “Humanity has seen that. From fire to the steam engine to electricity to transportation. Humanity doesn’t put the genie back in the bottle. We transform the genie into a useful genie that can help our different use cases. And we put guardrails around that genie. That’s what policymakers should be doing for AI.”
Our Deeper View #
We can always count on Li for a mixture of human-centric pragmatism and useful storytelling around AI. In a world dominated by extreme rhetoric and polarized views, those who take sides are rewarded with attention and confirmation, and it’s never very flashy to be a moderate. Li is one of the most effective voices at finding a middle path in the minefield of today’s AI debates. And her perspective is bolstered by a mixture of long experience and deep curiosity. Though narratives of either extreme doomerism or extreme optimism generally steal the spotlight in AI, the industry needs to do a better job of surfacing more moderate voices like Li’s and create more dialogue around these topics in ways that give more people opportunities to participate.