Alfred Spector on Balancing Ethics, Skills, and Regulation in the AI Era.
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Alfred Spector’s distinguished career includes groundbreaking work in networked computing systems and leadership roles in research at IBM, Google, and Two Sigma Investments. He is currently a visiting scholar at MIT. Key topics include the importance of considering context and ethics when developing AI systems, the skills gap in AI literacy, and approaches to AI adoption and governance in companies. The conversation also touches on the concept of hybrid intelligence combining human and AI capabilities. [This episode originally aired on Generative AI in the Real World, a podcast series I’m hosting for O’Reilly.]
Interview highlights – key sections from the video version:
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- Roles at MIT and Blackstone
- Discussion on the Book “Data Science and Context”
- Importance of Ethics in AI
- Google’s Approach vs. Apple’s Approach
- Organizational and Cultural Challenges in AI Adoption
- AI Governance in Companies
- Internal vs. External Applications of AI
- The Rise of AI Accessibility and Prompt Engineering
- The Need for Domain-Specific Knowledge
- Trends in Generative AI: Co-pilots and Agents
- Hybrid Intelligence: People and Machines Together
- Challenges and Fragility in AI Systems
- Regulations: SB 1047 and Beyond
Related content:
- A video version of this conversation is available on our YouTube channel.
- Alfred Spector and Peter Norvig will hold a fireside chat at the AI Conference (San Francisco; Sep 10-11). Use this discount code to get 25% off.
- Peter Norvig and Alfred Spector → Data Science and AI in Context
- What is an AI Alignment Platform?
- Andrew Burt → From Preparation to Recovery: Mastering AI Incident Response
- Chris Wiggins → How Data and AI Happened
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