Le AI, l'inconoscibilità ed il Futuro - Conferenza a Bologna, Facoltà di Matematica #1258

Summary

The speaker discusses the impact of artificial intelligence technologies on the economic fabric of reality, emphasizing that AI will not replace professions but rather the redundancy within them. AI increases productivity by reducing the need for junior professionals, who are currently the trial and error phase of the workforce. The speaker also highlights the challenges of learning from AI, the consumerization of AI, and the biases it introduces. Furthermore, they touch upon the monopolization of AI capabilities by a few companies and the inevitable risks and errors associated with AI adoption, advocating for a risk-based approach to AI ethics and decision-making.

Takeaways

• 😌 The speaker emphasizes the growing impact of AI technologies on various aspects of reality, particularly in the economic and factual realms.
• 🧑‍💼 AI is not replacing professions, but rather the redundancy within professions. Specific competencies of a few individuals will remain crucial.
• 🔄 AI can perform tasks previously done by multiple junior employees, leading to significant productivity increases.
• 📉 Some companies have already reduced their junior staff because AI performs many of their tasks more efficiently.
• 🤔 There is a significant issue with learning and error correction in the absence of traditional junior roles, which are critical for learning through mistakes.
• ⚠️ AI systems are often used in production due to their efficiency, but they can introduce biases, as demonstrated by examples like GPT's flawed CV screening.
• 🏢 The rise of AI enables the creation of highly efficient, potentially one-person companies, leveraging advanced AI systems.
• 📝 There's a challenge in aligning AI with ethical and moral values, which requires human intervention and oversight.
• 🚧 The AI Act takes a risk-based approach to regulating AI applications, but it doesn't fully account for the inherent risks of the systems themselves.
• 📚 The speaker recommends reading materials like 'Weapons of Math Destruction' and works by Floridi to understand the dangers and ethical considerations of AI.

Q & A

What is the main impact of artificial intelligence technologies on the current economic reality?

The main impact of artificial intelligence technologies is not the replacement of professions but the reduction of redundancy within them. It's about the specific competence of a limited number of people being replaced by more efficient processes.

How does the speaker describe the role of junior professionals in the context of AI?

The speaker describes junior professionals as those who make attempts and proofs, essentially being part of a parallel process to reality, where their work is evaluated in parallel, and the best outcomes are chosen, similar to how AI processes work.

What is the speaker's view on the productivity increase due to AI?

The speaker believes that productivity in various fields increases exponentially due to AI because one person can now do the work of many, as seen in their clients who have dismissed many junior staff members because it's no longer necessary.

What are the three problems the speaker identifies with AI?

The three problems identified are: 1) Conceptual learning issues where people learn only through mistakes, 2) Consumerization of AI leading to reliance on it for tasks like CV screening which introduces biases, and 3) The monopoly of AI capabilities by a very limited number of companies.

What does the speaker suggest about the learning process in the professional world?

The speaker suggests that the learning process, especially in the 'junior' phase, is about trial and error, similar to how AI learns, but there is currently no way to learn beyond this phase without the opportunity to understand what is happening and what is going wrong.

What is the issue with AI in terms of bias as mentioned in the script?

The issue with AI in terms of bias is that it can inadvertently introduce significant biases, as seen in the example of AI being used for CV screening, which is not programmed to be fair and can lead to unfair hiring practices.

What is the speaker's opinion on the monopoly of AI capabilities by a few companies?

The speaker believes that while AI empowers anyone to build large entrepreneurial realities from scratch, it does so by giving a monopoly of empowerment to a very limited number of companies, which can influence both the positive and negative aspects of entrepreneurship.

What is the significance of the paper 'is inevitable' mentioned by the speaker?

The paper 'is inevitable' is significant because it provides a formal proof that hallucinations are inevitable with AI, similar to the incompleteness theorem by Gödel, implying that there will always be elements outside of any given set of rules or data.

What does the speaker mean by 'allucinazioni' in the context of AI?

By 'allucinazioni', the speaker is referring to the inevitable errors or hallucinations that AI systems will produce, which are errors in understanding or processing information that do not align with reality.

What is the speaker's view on the adoption of technology and its risks?

The speaker believes that once a technology is invented, it is impossible to prevent its adoption. The challenge lies in accepting the risks and understanding that there will be errors or 'deaths' in the process, much like the adoption of any new technology.

What is the importance of the AI Act mentioned by the speaker?

The AI Act is important because it is a risk-based approach to regulate AI applications, focusing on the risks associated with their use. However, the speaker criticizes it for not calculating the endemic risk of the system, which is crucial for understanding the true impact of AI applications.