Tufekci examines how Artificial Good-Enough Intelligence —AI that may not outperform humans or even old technology, but is good enough for broad use because it removes friction and is faster, cheaper and deployable at scale— can fuel major turbulence, and in a hard-to-predict manner.
A lot of early predictions about how new tech will change the world — good and bad — end up being wrong or misleading. We often miss the big risks and the turbulence that come just from technology removing friction and making things cheaper, and deployable at scale.
So it’s fair to ask: Are we having the wrong nightmares about AI? We hear worries that “artificial general intelligence” — AGI, or when machine intelligence is as good as or better than humans — is a huge threat. We’re often warned that these super-smart machines could turn on us, like in the Terminator movie. We also hear much about job losses and bias from using these technologies in a routine way.
But new tech doesn’t have to be better than humans, or even super impressive compared to old tech, to cause major issues, usually in ways we don’t see coming. Cars weren’t so transformative just because they were faster than horses; and they also weren’t just horseless carriages. Additionally, just removing friction — as technology tends to do — can upset long-standing structures that assumed that friction as part of how they operated.
This talk will bring the focus back on “Artificial Good-Enough Intelligence” — AI that’s not necessarily better at singular benchmarks than humans or even older tech — and look into some of the turbulence it might cause in ways that aren’t sufficiently represented on the policy or the regulatory agenda.
Bio: Zeynep Tufekci is the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University and columnist for The New York Times. Her work revolves around the intersection of technology, science and society, including topics such as social media and artificial intelligence, the pandemic, as well as politics and democracy. She approaches social challenges using complex and systems-based thinking, and focuses on policy and response to such challenges.
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