Professor Scot Galloway from New York University is one of my most inspirational thinkers. I recently attended an online workshop hosted by him and his friend, Gary Marcus, the retired psychology professor and one of the leading voices in artificial intelligence. The workshop was entitled, “Threats & Opportunities of AI” and they gave an overview of the field as of July 2023.
The main threat of AI was in the field of misinformation and interference by bad agents in America’s democratic elections, especially in the run-up to the November 2024 presidential election. They proposed having a six-month to 30-day moratorium on election advertisements before the big day. They see an absence of governmental regulation of AI as being a big problem. Companies focus on profits, not the better interests of society.
Professor Marcus is not impressed with the Large Language Models (Chat GPT). They are clever at putting together a “pastiche of human language they do not understand” and the software makes many mistakes. In the short term, AI is not reliable enough to take over most jobs. Perhaps occupations like voice-overs will be done through AI, but there will be more job creation than job destruction. As Scot Galloway put it, “Someone who understands AI will take your job, not AI will take your job.”
In regard to the field of education, it is almost impossible to replace teachers and professors. The magic of education is getting students together in discussion to learn how to present their opinions and ideas, take an argument and give importance to the material they are learning. Professor Marcus advises teaching kids a “healthy skepticism” of AI and to think critically about AI tools. AI will improve rapidly and students should learn how to add AI to their tool box of skills.
I am seriously considering taking their AI for Personal Productivity course on September 13.
TIS Director's Blog 
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