On Oct. 3, 2024, Oklahoma Christian University hosted AI Expert and Future Point of View CEO Hart Brown at the annual J.J. Millican Ethics Symposium. The event in Judd Theater was introduced by Engineering and Computer Science Dean Byron Newberry. In his presentation, Brown discussed the evolving role of AI in society and emphasized its impact on productivity and employment. Furthermore, he spoke to the necessity for ethical governance and diverse committees to oversee decisions dictated by AI.
Brown’s career in artificial intelligence began with a system named Watson, which is known for solving the television quiz show, Jeopardy. From there, his career took off until he finally landed in Edmond as the CEO of the Future Point of View.
Future Point of View is a technology strategy firm, with offices across the nation helping educate clients and develop strategies for topics such as AI.
Because AI progresses much faster than many technological advancements, months often reflect major strides in the industry.
“When I say the olden days, the old days were three months ago because things have changed since then,” Brown said. ”You start to see that our skill development, the time for us to learn a skill, and the time for that skill to no longer be as valuable anymore, is starting to get close to being the same. Meaning we are going to have to continue to learn.”
Brown speaks to economies grappling with demographic shifts and an aging workforce where the urgency to harness artificial intelligence becomes increasingly apparent. Brown said there are “record-low unemployment rates in advanced economies worldwide,” and he implied AI could be the unlikely solution.
“This year, there is anticipated to be 8 billion AI-connected devices on the planet. How many people are on the planet right now? About 7.8 billion,” Brown said.
Time is another major aspect of the conversation when it comes to AI.
“By 2030 it’s anticipated that, by leveraging these systems appropriately, about 30% of what we do on a day-to-day basis will be automated,” Brown said. “So think about that for a minute. You just got 30% of your day back. As it continues to get more and more powerful, you’ll get more and more time back.”
Members of the audience asked Brown how the newly regained time will be used. Brown asks the same question to the big corporations who are thinking about implementing these A.I. models.
“I think that’s a challenge for all of us and all the executives I talk to everybody around the world. I would argue that most technology, all the way back as far as any of us can remember, has likely given us to be, you could argue, less and less human,” Brown said. “We talk less and less. Is artificial intelligence the first technology that actually makes us more human, actually gives us time back and takes us away from the attention economy? That’s the challenge in front of you. Those are the questions that you’re going to have to answer. Can we leverage this technology to become more human, and what do we do with that time?”
Due to the concern of AI outgrowing human intelligence, Brown discussed how its safety and values fall back on humanity first.
“The concern at the end of the day, and the word that everybody likes to use, is alignment. Is it aligned with human values? And that starts with how it was trained, sort of pre-deployment, and then deployment, how is it re-trained?” Brown said. “So if you think about this in sort of cognitive terms, one of the things that I talk to my clients about this all is when they turn these systems on, you get the thumbs up and thumbs down, even on an AI, like it gives you an answer.”
From there, even users can be a part of the solution of alignment.
“I always encourage you, if it is a good answer, give it a thumbs up. If it’s a bad answer, give it a thumbs down. It’s going through reinforcement learning. So it is constantly learning in and of itself, and I can start to impart some level of values within that system, but it is a concern that we will have some systems without alignment to human values.”
Brown spoke to ways of policing these systems in a larger corporate context.
“I need somebody who is ethically minded to sit on top of these systems, but I also need somebody who can think in multiple horizons. The decisions we make today are going to cascade, no matter what we do, and result in things that we need to predict. We need to know that the decisions we’re making now are the right ones, not just for today, but tomorrow.”
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