Everyone from Bill Gates to the Pope has issued warnings about artificial intelligence. Some former AI engineers have predicted it will cause the end of humanity.
At the Boston AI Week Summit in the Seaport, there were a lot of people excited about AI, including leaders, investors and entrepreneurs.
It was the second such summit and it was put together by Judah Phillips. Phillips has been in the tech industry for a long time and believes AI will be a force for good and wanted to get like-minded people together in one place.
Phillips, of course, has seen the headlines. Lately, none of them have been good.
“I think it’s going to enable peace and prosperity. I’m not a doomer,” Phillips said with a smile that never seems to leave his face. “I don’t think that AI is going to destroy the economy, I don’t think it’s going to destroy the world. I think it’s going to help to create a newer economy, transform the way we’re working, transform jobs.”
Despite Gallup poll numbers that show Gen Z is becoming less excited about AI as time goes on, a young man named Michael Bien said there will be reason to be excited about artificial intelligence in the near future. Bien is a graduate student at Harvard University and the CEO of his own startup. He’s working to use AI technology to create the chips needed for AI technology.
Bien says right now most people are using AI for text-based learning, but soon it will lead to development of physical devices to help our lives.
“For example, if AI can just make a meal for me from the beginning, from scratch. I don’t even speak a word. But it just knows what my daily schedule looks like,” Bien said.
But even with all that enthusiasm hanging over the hallways and meeting rooms of this summit, there were also people sounding the alarm about where AI is in this very moment.
Mike Grandinetti, an executive fellow at Harvard Business School, was one of the featured speakers. He is a tech and entrepreneurial leader who has traveled the world speaking to business leaders who have talked about how AI has increased productivity. But Grandinetti says safeguards need to be put in place immediately.
“I don’t see, you know, the Terminator showing up on our doorstep anytime soon,” Grandinetti said. “But I think we’re going to see a lot more cyberattacks which, you know, can really do damage. It could bring down utility companies, water companies. A 13-year-old kid with the wrong intention can do some serious damage today.”
When asked about leaders of AI companies who are seeking help, saying they built something they can’t control, Grandinetti said, “it’s scary.”
“It is scary. I mean, I think you’d have to be irrational not to be troubled by that,” Grandinetti said.
Interestingly, some at the summit wondered about the motivation of the largest AI companies and their doomsday predictions. Phillips, the founder of the Boston AI Summit said, “I often ask myself who is making money off this?”
The critics wonder are they hoping for strict government regulations that will crush competition? Are they looking for money from the government?
Carol Myers from Scale It Up Ventures had an interesting theory.
“There are definitely people who feel that some of this is about making the technology seem so powerful that everybody wants to use it,” Myers said. “But I think they’re also learning that when they do that, then it makes people afraid to use it, so they might have to start to walk a little bit more of a fine line.”
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