Artificial Intelligence and You

Is work heading for utopia? My guest today is John Danaher, senior lecturer in law at the University of Galway and author of the 2019 book, Automation and Utopia: Human Flourishing in a World without Work, which is an amazingly broad discourse on the future of work ranging from today’s immediate issues to the different kinds of utopia – or dystopia, depending on your viewpoint – ultimately possible when automation becomes capable of replicating everything that humans do. 

John has published over 40 papers on topics including the risks of advanced AI, the meaning of life in the future of work, the ethics of human enhancement, the intersection of law and neuroscience, the utility of brain-based lie detection, and the philosophy of religion. He is co-editor of Robot Sex: Social And Ethical Implications from MIT Press, and his work has appeared in The Guardian, Aeon, and The Philosopher’s Magazine.

In the first part of the interview we talk about how much jobs may be automated and the methodology behind studies of that, the impact of automation on job satisfaction, what’s happening in academia, and much more.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

Helping the British Government understand AI since 2016 is our guest, Lord Tim Clement-Jones, co-founder and co-chair of Britain's All-Party Parliamentary Group on Artificial Intelligence since 2016. He is also former Liberal Democrat House of Lords spokesperson for Science, Innovation and Technology and former Chair of the House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence which reported in 2018 with “AI in the UK: Ready Willing and Able?” and its follow-up report in 2020 “AI in the UK: No Room for Complacency.” His new book, "Living with the Algorithm: Servant or Master?: AI Governance and Policy for the Future" came out in the UK in March, with a North American release date of July 18.

In the second half, we talk about elections, including the one just held in the UK, and disinformation, what AI and robots do to the flow of capital, the effects of AI upon education and enterprise culture, privacy and making AI accountable and trustworthy.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

Helping the British Government understand AI since 2016 is our guest, Lord Tim Clement-Jones, co-founder and co-chair of Britain's All-Party Parliamentary Group on Artificial Intelligence since 2016. He is also former Liberal Democrat House of Lords spokesperson for Science, Innovation and Technology and former Chair of the House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence which reported in 2018 with “AI in the UK: Ready Willing and Able?” and its follow-up report in 2020 “AI in the UK: No Room for Complacency.” His new book, "Living with the Algorithm: Servant or Master?: AI Governance and Policy for the Future" came out in the UK in March, with a North American release date of July 18.

In this first part, Tim gives a big picture of how #AI regulation has been proceeding on the global stage since before large language models were a thing, giving us the context that took us from the Asilomar Principles to today’s Hiroshima principles and the EU AI Act and the new ISO standard 42001 for AI. And we talk about long-term planning, intellectual property rights, the effects of the open letters that called for a pause or moratorium on model training, and much more.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

As the European Union AI Act rolls out, there are so many questions about what it will mean to businesses trying to navigate the incredibly volatile and complex field of AI regulation. Here to answer those questions is Antonina Burlachenko, Head of Quality and Regulatory Consulting at Star Global Consulting, calling from Poland. She explains what the Act really means for businesses and consumers, comparing it with GDPR, and providing some technical information around standards and regulations and other aspects of what it’s like for businesses to engage with the Act at a practical level. 

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

To help us get new and valuable insights into the future of work is Matt Beane, Assistant Professor in the Technology Management Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has spent over a decade doing extensive field research on how workers, organizations and even AI defy norms and rules in the 21st century. 

His new book: The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines, was just published by Harper Business, and he has given you a special deal as a listener, to get a free copy of the first chapter, by going to http://aiandyou.theskillcodebook.com. The book lays out a plan for us to protect our skills and by extension the human connection between experts and novices (which is the foundation of skill-building) even as AI continues to take hold in our lives.

In the conclusion, we talk more about what AIs do to the mentoring and learning pipelines in the workplace, and how education should pivot to deal with the changes to the future of work. 

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

To help us get new and valuable insights into the future of work is Matt Beane, Assistant Professor in the Technology Management Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has spent over a decade doing extensive field research on how workers, organizations and even AI defy norms and rules in the 21st century. 

His new book: The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines, was just published by Harper Business, and he has given you a special deal as a listener, to get a free copy of the first chapter, by going to http://aiandyou.theskillcodebook.com. The book lays out a plan for us to protect our skills and by extension the human connection between experts and novices (which is the foundation of skill-building) even as AI continues to take hold in our lives.

In this first part, we talk about how Matt studied surgeons in operating rooms for his PhD thesis and saw the effects that the introduction of a robot surgical system had in stifling the time-honored process of mentoring new surgeons, and generalized this to other fields, and observed the rise of “shadow learning,” where people bend or break the rules to get the learning they need. 

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

My guest is William A. Adams, technologist, philanthropist, and recorded by the Computer History Museum as one of the first Black entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. He was the first technical advisor to Microsoft’s CTO Kevin Scott and has founded and overseen global initiatives at Microsoft from XML technologies as early as 1998, to DE&I initiatives in 2015. The Leap program, with a focus on diverse hiring, was named Microsoft’s D&I Program of the year in 2020.

We talk about William’s experience creating the Leap program, its impact, the relationship between AI and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs like Leap, and creating personalized chatbots.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

Our relationship with time is dysfunctional. Here to help us explore possibly the most critical effect of AI on the pace of life is Oliver Burkeman, author of the best-selling self-help book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals and former author of the psychology column “This Column Will Change Your Life” in The Guardian.

Most of us can attest to being severely overworked and with a shrinking amount of personal time left over. This is true despite the introduction into our lives of a huge amount of technology from the PC to the Internet. Why have tools like email, Google, and instant messaging not reduced our workload and stress? In fact, it’s not hard to believe that they are responsible for making those things worse. In which case, we must ask, what effect will unleashing AI – which accelerates everything it touches - have on our work life? 

This is exactly the thought space that Oliver inhabits, and his work has made a major difference in my own life. Read Oliver's posts and subscribe to his newsletter at OliverBurkeman.com.

In the conclusion of the interview, we talk about whether this is Luddism, the influence of the Silicon Valley billionaires’ pursuit of immortality, the appropriate use of AI to save us time, and what will remain constant throughout any amount of technological evolution. 

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.