Summary
In a recent episode titled "Cade Metz talks about how AI took over the world," the Dr. Pawd podcast featured Kade Metz, a technology correspondent for The New York Times and author of "Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought AI to Google, Facebook, and the World." The conversation centered around the impact of AI and deep learning on our society and the pioneers who drove groundbreaking advancements in these fields. The episode touches on a variety of topics, including deep learning and neural networks, robotics and AI for physical applications, the development of language models, and the importance of telling the stories of the people behind AI advancements.
One of the key topics covered in the episode is the coming of age of deep learning, which is a mathematical system that recognizes patterns, particularly in images. The origins of neural networks date back to the 1950s, but it was not until 2012 with the Imagenet moment that they really took off. Imagenet was a contest for recognizing objects in images, and the data collected was essential to making neural networks work. Jeff Hinton and his students applied neural networks to the data set, and their technology worked better than any other before it.
The episode also discusses the trajectory of Andrew Ing, one of the pioneers in the field of AI, particularly in neural networks. Ing was one of the first to believe in the potential of neural networks despite it being an unpopular idea at the time. He later joined a research group led by Jeff Hinton in Canada and became a key proponent of the technology. Ing eventually pitched the idea of using neural networks to Larry Page, the founder and CEO of Google, and talked about its potential for speech recognition, image recognition, and even AGI.
Despite the success of AI technology, concerns were raised about bias in the data used to train these systems and the potential harm they could cause. Women of color, such as Deb Raji, Joy Buolamwini, and Timnit Gebru, were instrumental in highlighting these issues and bringing attention to the biases in AI systems. The debate over AI systems is centered around the clash between profit motive and the need to address the vulnerabilities and bias in these systems.
The episode highlights the challenges facing the development of autonomous flying drones for military purposes, including safety concerns. The importance of addressing questions around natural language and robotics, including the issue of bias in language models and the challenge of ensuring safety in self-driving cars, is also emphasized.
Overall, the episode provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution and impact of AI technology, particularly deep learning and neural networks, and the pioneers who drove groundbreaking advancements in these fields. It brings attention to ongoing concerns around bias and the ethical and societal implications of AI technology while highlighting the importance of telling the stories of the people behind AI advancements.
