AI with a Heap of Humility.

As a designer and human problem solver, I've noticed that we face both promise and fear as we progress in machine learning.

A recent interview with Lex Fridman from MIT and Sam Altman from OpenAI emphasized the importance of human values such as humility and empathy, which can help eliminate bias in this field.

We must keep these values in mind as we advance in technology.

See below for excerpts.

Lex Fridman: [Stuart Russell has talked about] always having AGI to have some degree of uncertainty. Not having a dogmatic certainty to it. 

Sam Altman: That feels important.

Lex: So some of that is already handled with human alignment, human feedback… but it seems like there needs to be engineered in, a hard uncertainty. Humility, to put a romantic word to it.

Sam: Yeah.

Lex: Do you think that is possible to do?

Sam: The definition of those words, I think, the details really matter. But as I understand them, yes, I do.

Lex: Is GPT too [biased]?

Sam: I think it was too biased and will always be.

Lex: Is there something to be said about the employees of a company affecting the bias of a system?

Sam: Absolutely. We try to avoid the SF groupthink bubble. I’m going on an around-the-world tour to talk to our users in different cities. Like, show up in person, sit down in the bars they do, and walk through the city like they do. You learn so much and get out of the bubble so much.