The future of AI with Ted Lechterman

We sat down with Ted Lechterman, Chairholder, UNESCO Chair in AI Ethics & Governance at IE School of Humanities to talk about the future of AI.

What's the future of AI?

It could be a world where humans use AI carefully to enhance their capabilities and solve important social problems. It could also be a world of cognitive atrophy, widening inequalities, intensifying conflict, and severe threats to safety and security.

What's the coolest application of AI you've seen so far?

AI adoption in business: Name three benefits, and three potential risks

Benefits include productivity gains, cost savings, and performance improvements

costs include insufficient oversight, quality reductions, and abuses of power.

 

What excites you the most about an AI-empowered world?

 

Progress toward solving some of humanity's biggest challenges like disease and climate change.

 

What do you envision for the future of human-machine collaboration?

 

I expect that in the near term we will use personalized AI assistants much like we currently use smartphones but with greater functionality and more integration. In the medium term, we will need to answer critical questions about integrating AI more deeply into our biology and the ways in which AI-driven systems exercise power over humans across spheres of social life.

 

Who do you admire most in the world of AI in terms of their work?

 

Iason Gabriel, Seth Lazar, Shannon Vallor, Peter Railton

 

If you could solve any global problem in the world with AI, what would it be and why?

 

Curing serious disease would be quite attractive, but so would devising systems that enable the fair distribution of vaccines and healthcare. I am hopeful, moreover, that personalized AI assistants could someday help us to become more epistemically responsible, i.e, more impervious to misinformation, more reflective in our moral judgments. But given the tremendous ideological polarization we now face worldwide, the development of AI assistants might easily be captured by special interests to intensify ideological divisions.

What inspired you to participate in this AI summit as a speaker, and what message do you hope to convey to the audience?

 

I hope to show why philosophical methods are essential for understanding and navigating key challenges we face in developing, deploying, and governing AI. While there is wide agreement that certain values -- like democracy -- apply to AI, there is considerable disagreement about how these values should be interpreted, prioritized, and operationalized. Philosophical analysis helps us disentangle these questions so that we can make more robust decisions about the direction of AI. This way of thinking is accessible to everyone, but, like any skill, it requires patience and practice to develop.

 

Ted Lechterman
Chairholder, UNESCO Chair in AI Ethics & Governance
IE School of Humanities