The following is a transcription of the above video, and The Market Herald Canada has edited it for clarity:
Artificial intelligence continues to evolve at exponential speeds.
Joining me to discuss the opportunities, dangers, and protections of AI is Kevin Matsui, managing director at CARE AI.
CARE AI is the Center for Advancing Responsible and Ethical Artificial Intelligence at the University of Guelph.
TMH: Kevin, AI is all around us. Where are some of the obvious touchpoints that have become embedded into our lives?
Matsui: You know, certainly anything like online shopping or even web search. But, you know, you can even see how that’s evolved from the standpoint of, 10, 20 years, when Amazon was first getting going, the recommendations it would offer, it would be whatever the bestselling books (were) at the time.
So everybody would get a recommendation of the latest Dan Brown book or something like that. Read the first page of the novel and say, “Is this a narrator I want to spend time with?” It’s important to be able to do things like that; these are all the books here that are featured in The New York Times Book Review this week.
We have customers review books, and then we select a winner every month from the reviews that get submitted of books. Now you get customized recommendations based on your shopping and search histories and things like that. So, you know, web search has obviously been enhanced by the addition of artificial intelligence.
But also, the way that, things like Spotify has worked or Netflix. Spotify, for example, there used to be an issue with. And they acquired another technology company, where a lot of it was based on sort of listening patterns or people listening to different types of songs.
But then you get a problem where somebody would be listening to Justin Bieber at Christmas time, and then they switched from (a) Christmas song to Justin Bieber. So then, come March, what songs would people be listening to? That would be the confusion that it would create. It’s evolving with more capability and really customizing (to) personalize to people’s tastes and their interests as well.
TMH: And this creates the need for more development start-ups and companies to keep this evolution moving forward.
Matsui: That’s right. I think expectations both commercially and individually as consumers – people are demanding a better quality of customer experience. And that level of personalization is driven by delivering that in different fields or developing special applications for, whether it’s legal services or any particular type of customization, a specific domain.
TMH: And we can’t have an AI conversation without bringing in the godfather of AI, Geoffrey Hinton. He left Google to speak freely on the risks of AI, as well as the existential threat of AI outsmarting humans. What are some of the dangers and challenges of AI adoption?
Matsui: Well, I think there’s like both concerns in the short term, but also the longer term or existential threats as, you know, he referred to. I think some of the things that, not to speak for him or not to start speculating what he is thinking.
I think that, if you listen to interviews that he was giving, like last year, pre-ChatGPT or the difference between GPT 3.5 and then when GPT 4 was released. I think it’s sort of the rapid pace of advancement that is a bit, sort of the disconcerting aspect of it.
University of Toronto video featuring Hinton: Very recently, I realized that because these digital models have this kind of hive mind, where when one agent learns something, all the other agents know it. They might actually already be better than biological intelligence.
And so I kind of completely flipped my opinion from the idea it’s going to be a long time before they can do everything the brain does. It’s going to be 30 to 50 years before they’re better than us, which is what I thought for until very recently.
A few months ago, I suddenly realized maybe they’re already better than us, they’re just smaller. And when they get bigger, then they’ll be smarter than us. And that was quite scary.
It was a sudden change of opinion that instead of being 30 to 50 years, it was … five years to 20 years, something like that.
Matsui: In combination with the sort of the political climates in the world that fight it, the polarization, (it’s) very difficult to agree on any type of establishing legislative guardrails, and things like that are proper protections or really enforcing that. Those are the compounding challenges upon the rapid pace of innovation and the rapid pace of technical changes.
TMH: And what is in place to help foresee the dangers and deal with them?
Matsui: Well, I mean, different countries or in different parts of the world are sort of implementing different sort of solutions from the legislative standpoint. I mean, I think there’s within the EU, the AI Act and ensuring sort of an extension of the privacy protections that exist in Europe.
I think those sort of measures help provide some degree of protection. You know, obviously in Canada where there’s legislation and activity around that also, you know, pledges from different companies to adhere to different types of policies and that. So, I think it’s constructive, at least from the standpoint of the attention that these issues are getting, that people are concerned about them.
You know, the public is demanding that as well. And I think it’s hard for legislation to maybe keep pace with technology, but at least there’s the focus on making those improvements or ensuring that the safeguards are in place.
TMH: What ideas and protections can be implemented to help with the AI threat?
Matsui: I think that, you know, certainly the idea of putting watermarks on images and text and things that have been generated by artificial intelligence, those are all sort of useful measures to ensure that creativity is properly compensated. And things like copyright are – as you can see this with the screenwriters, and the agreements with production companies in the U.S. and how that sort – trying to ensure that there are protections in place for people involved in the creative process.
TMH: AI continues to be developed and there is just no putting it back in the box. On the humanity side, how do we know our best interests are protected and the appropriate guardrails are in place and will be in place?
Matsui: That’s right. I mean, that’s the sort of concern that people have. We are aware of the situations that could evolve; I think that helps fuel the discussion and ensure that things aren’t being developed without any concern for that or without any deniability of what’s being developed from that perspective.
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