How will they impact us all? As a longtime researcher in AI, I'm excited about the ways in
which these new AI systems can improve our healthcare, education, climate and more. At the same
time, we need to think carefully about how to use them and how to prevent their misuse.
I oppose recent suggestions that we simply ban their development, but I support and participate in
efforts to anticipate their possible uses and impacts, and to help our leaders think through how
governments should react. ...
It will be useful to regulate AI, but primarily at the application level. For example, AI
applications to medical diagnosis should be regulated very differently from AI applications to
self-driving cars. Collaboration between industry, government and citizens will be essential in
developing appropriate regulations.
A short fireside chat with Reid Hoffman and Ryan Heath about what is next in Generative AI,
from the SCSP Global Emerging Technology Summit, Washington D.C., September 21, 2023.
I currently chair
a task
force for the non-partisan, non-profit SCSP, to make recommendations to the
U.S. government on the technology of Large Language Models, their impact on society, and
actions the government might want to take in response.
Here's a fireside chat I did
regarding Large Language Models on May 25, 2023.
AI will also impact jobs. For my work on this topic, see the Current Research item below
"How will AI change the future of work?"
Current Research
How can AI improve education? Watch my YouTube video from November
2023: Where Can AI Take Education by
2030?. My thesis: this is the decade when AI will truly revolutionize online education. Why?
Because (1) for the first time we have finally have online education sites that have taught
millions of students, providing more training data showing how students learn, than a human
teacher could ever see in a 100-year teaching career, and (2) recent AI advances in machine
learning, large natural language models, and reasoning give us the right tools to build AI agents
that tutor online students. ...
Here are two problems I've been working on with my collaborators:
Tracing the knowledge state of students as they work through the online curriculum.
Learning which teaching actions produce best learning outcomes. In January 2023 we deployed our
trained model on the CK12.org platform, and it has now
helped hundreds of thousands of online students by choosing the right hint to give them.
How does the brain represent language meaning? We collect images of brain activity while
human subjects read text, then use machine learning to analyze how observed brain activity
represents language meaning. ...
How will AI change the future of work? I co-chaired a U.S. National Academy study on this
question with Erik Brynjolfsson in 2017. We are now co-chairing a new Congressionally-mandated
follow on study, due out in 2023.
...