Artificial Intelligence and You

Virtually everything that’s difficult about getting computers to do work for us is in getting them to understand our question or request and in our understanding their answer. How we interact with them is the problem.

And that's where Sophie Kleber comes in. She is the UX – that’s User Experience – Director for the Future of Work at Google and an expert in ethical AI and future human-machine interaction. She deeply understands the emotional development of automated assistants, artificial intelligence, and physical spaces. Sophie develops technology that enables individuals to be their best selves. Before joining Google, Sophie held the Global Executive Creative Director role at Huge, collaborating with brands like IKEA and Thomson Reuters. She holds an MA in Communication Design and an MBA in Product Design, and is a Fulbright fellow. 

We talk about the Uncanny Valley and how we relate to computers as though they were human or inhuman, and what if they looked like Bugs Bunny. We talk about the environments and situations where some people have intimate relationships with AIs, gender stereotyping in large language models, and where emotional interactions with computers help or hinder.

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

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

Teachers all over the world right now are having similar thoughts: Is AI going to take my job? How do I deal with homework that might have been done by ChatGPT? I know, because I've talked with many teachers, and these are universal concerns.

So I'm visiting the topic of AI in education - not for the first time, not for the last. There are important and urgent issues to tackle; they become most acute at the high school level, but this episode will be useful for all levels.

The reason it's so important for me to work with schools so much as an AI change management consultant is that there's no need for teachers to fear for their jobs. They are doing the most important job on the planet right now because they are literally educating the generation that is going to save the world. And generative AI has not created a learning problem: it's created learning opportunities. It's not created a teaching problem; it's created teaching opportunities. It has, however, created an assessment problem, and I'll talk about that.

Kids need their human teachers more than ever before to model for them how to deal with disruption from technology, because change will never again happen as slowly as it does today, and all of their careers will be disrupted far more than anyone's is today. No student is going to remember something ChatGPT said for the rest of their life. The teacher’s job is to focus on the qualities that the AI cannot embody—the personal interactions that occur face to face when the teacher makes that lasting impression that inspires the student.

Let's have honest, deep, and productive conversations about these issues now. A new school year is approaching and this is the time.

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

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

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 conclusion of the interview we talk about generative AI extending our minds, the Luddite Fallacy and why this time things will be different, the effects of automation on class structure, and… Taylor Swift.

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

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

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.