Author: Rob Matheson | MIT News Office<\/p>\n
A three-day celebration event this week for the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing put focus on the Institute\u2019s new role in helping society navigate a promising yet challenging future for artificial intelligence (AI), as it seeps into nearly all aspects of society.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, the final day of the event, a series of talks and panel discussions<\/a> by researchers and industry experts conveyed enthusiasm for AI-enabled advances in many global sectors, but emphasized concerns \u2014\u00a0on topics such as data privacy, job automation, and personal and social issues \u2014 that accompany the computing revolution.<\/p>\n Kicking off the day\u2019s events, MIT President Rafael Reif said the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing will train students in an interdisciplinary approach to AI. It will also train them to take a step back and weigh potential downsides of AI, which is poised to disrupt \u201cevery sector of our society.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone knows pushing the limits of new technologies can be so thrilling that it\u2019s hard to think about consequences and how [AI] too might be misused,\u201d Reif said. \u201cIt is time to educate a new generation of technologists in the public interest, and I\u2019m optimistic that the MIT Schwarzman College [of Computing] is the right place for that job.\u201d<\/p>\n In opening remarks, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker gave MIT \u201cenormous credit\u201d for focusing its research and education on the positive and negative impact of AI. \u201cHaving a place like MIT \u2026 think about the whole picture in respect to what this is going to mean for individuals, businesses, governments, and society is a gift,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Personal and industrial AI<\/strong><\/p>\n In a panel discussion titled, \u201cComputing the Future: Setting New Directions,\u201d MIT alumnus Drew Houston \u201905, co-founder of Dropbox, described an idyllic future where by 2030 AI could take over many tedious professional tasks, freeing humans to be more creative and productive.<\/p>\n Workers today, Houston said, spend more than 60 percent of their working lives organizing emails, coordinating schedules, and planning various aspects of their job. As computers start refining skills \u2014 such as analyzing and answering queries in natural language, and understanding very complex systems \u2014 each of us may soon have AI-based assistants that can handle many of those mundane tasks, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re on the eve of a new generation of our partnership with machines \u2026 where machines will take a lot of the busy work so people can \u2026 spend our working days on the subset of our work that\u2019s really fulfilling and meaningful,\u201d Houston said. \u201cMy hope is that, in 2030, we\u2019ll look back on now as the beginning of a revolution that freed our minds the way the industrial revolution freed our hands. My last hope is that \u2026 the new [MIT Schwarzman College of Computing] is the place where that revolution is born.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n Speaking with reporters before the panel discussion \u201cComputing for the Marketplace: Entrepreneurship and AI,\u201d Eric Schmidt, former executive chairman of Alphabet and a visiting innovation fellow at MIT, also spoke of a coming age of AI assistants. Smart teddy bears could help children learn language, virtual assistants could plan people\u2019s days, and personal robots could ensure the elderly take medication on schedule. \u201cThis model of an assistant \u2026 is at the basis of the vision of how people will see a difference in our lives every day,\u201d Schmidt said.<\/p>\n He noted many emerging AI-based research and business opportunities, including analyzing patient data to predict risk of diseases, discovering new compounds for drug discovery, and predicting regions where wind farms produce the most power, which is critical for obtaining clean-energy funding. \u201cMIT is at the forefront of every single example that I just gave,\u201d Schmidt said.<\/p>\n When asked by panel moderator Katie Rae, executive director of The Engine, what she thinks is the most significant aspect of AI in industry, iRobot co-founder Helen Greiner cited supply chain automation. Robots could, for instance, package goods more quickly and efficiently, and driverless delivery trucks could soon deliver those packages, she said: \u201cLogistics in general will be changed\u201d in the coming years.<\/p>\n Finding an algorithmic utopia<\/strong><\/p>\n For Institute Professor Robert Langer, another panelist in \u201cComputing for the Marketplace,\u201d AI holds great promise for early disease diagnoses. With enough medical data, for instance, AI models can identify biological \u201cfingerprints\u201d of certain diseases in patients. \u201cThen, you can use AI to analyze those fingerprints and decide what \u2026 gives someone a risk of cancer,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can do drug testing that way too. You can see [a patient has] a fingerprint that \u2026 shows you that a drug will treat the cancer for that person.\u201d<\/p>\n But in the \u201cComputing the Future\u201d section, David Siegel, co-chair of Two Sigma Investments and founding advisor for the MIT Quest for Intelligence, addressed issues with data, which is at the heart of AI. With the aid of AI, Siegel has seen computers go from helpful assistants to \u201croutinely making decisions for people\u201d in business, health care, and other areas. While AI models can benefit the world, \u201cthere is a fear that we may move in a direction that\u2019s far from an algorithmic utopia.\u201d<\/p>\n Siegel drew parallels between AI and the popular satirical film \u201cDr. Strangelove,\u201d in which an \u201calgorithmic doomsday machine\u201d threatens to destroy the world. AI algorithms must be made unbiased, safe, and secure, he said. That involves dedicated research in several important areas, at the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and around the globe, \u201cto avoid a Strangelove-like future.\u201d<\/p>\n One important area is data bias and security. Data bias, for instance, leads to inaccurate and untrustworthy algorithms. And if researchers can guarantee the privacy of medical data, he added, patients may be more willing to contribute their records to medical research.<\/p>\n Siegel noted a real-world example where, due to privacy concerns, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services years ago withheld patient records\u00a0from a large research dataset being used to study\u00a0substance misuse, which is responsible for tens of thousands of U.S. deaths annually. \u201cThat omission was a big loss for researchers and, by extension, patients,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are missing the opportunity to solve pressing problems because of the lack of accessible data. \u2026 Without solutions, the algorithms that drive our world are at high risk of becoming data-compromised.\u201d<\/p>\n Seeking humanity in AI<\/strong><\/p>\n In a panel discussion earlier in the day, \u201cComputing: Reflections and the Path Forward,\u201d Sherry Turkle, the Abby Rockefeller Mauz\u00e9 Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology, called on people to avoid \u201cfriction free\u201d technologies \u2014 which help people avoid stress of face-to-face interactions.<\/p>\n AI is now \u201cdeeply woven into this [friction-free] story,\u201d she said, noting that there are apps that help users plan walking routes, for example, to avoid people they dislike. \u201cBut who said a life without conflict \u2026 makes for the good life?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n She concluded with a \u201ccall to arms\u201d for the new college to help people understand the consequences of the digital world where confrontation is avoided, social media are scrutinized, and personal data are sold and shared with companies and governments: \u201cIt\u2019s time to reclaim our attention, our solitude, our privacy, and our democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking in the same section, Patrick H. Winston,\u00a0the Ford Professor of Engineering\u00a0at MIT, concluded on an equally humanistic \u2014 and optimistic \u2014\u00a0message. After walking the audience through the history of AI at MIT, including his run as director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory from 1972 to 1997, he told the audience he was going to discuss the greatest computing innovation of all time.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s us,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause nothing can think like we can. We don\u2019t know how to make computers do it yet, but it\u2019s something we should aspire to. \u2026 In the end, there\u2019s no reason why computers can\u2019t think like we [do] and can\u2019t be ethical and moral like we aspire to be.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Go to Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"