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Making sense of consciousness, with Luke Gbedemah

Consciousness is a tricky subject. Academics, philosophers, artists and mathematicians have grappled with its definition for centuries. There’s something mysterious about our perception of the world, and the way it gives rise to the feeling of conscious being. Something mysterious that makes us who we are.With the increasing sophistication of artificial intelligence models — like Google’s LaMDA — questions about the nature of consciousness are surfacing. Can a programme be sentient? Do other animals possess a form of consciousness similar to ours? Do conscious things deserve particular rights? The brain and the body, the nervous system and the senses, all seem to play a role. What on earth is going on in there? editor and invited experts Luke GbedemahData Reporter Anil SethProfessor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience, University of Sussex; Co-Director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness; Author of ‘Being You: a new science of consciousness’

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Making sense of consciousness, with Luke Gbedemah

Consciousness is a tricky subject. Academics, philosophers, artists and mathematicians have grappled with its definition for centuries. There’s something mysterious about our perception of the world, and the way it gives rise to the feeling of conscious being. Something mysterious that makes us who we are.With the increasing sophistication of artificial intelligence models — like Google’s LaMDA — questions about the nature of consciousness are surfacing. Can a programme be sentient? Do other animals possess a form of consciousness similar to ours? Do conscious things deserve particular rights? The brain and the body, the nervous system and the senses, all seem to play a role. What on earth is going on in there? editor and invited experts Luke GbedemahData Reporter Anil SethProfessor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience, University of Sussex; Co-Director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness; Author of ‘Being You: a new science of consciousness’

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Building trust: how do we ensure AI is deployed responsibly?

In partnership with Kainos, Tortoise hosted a roundtable event that addressed the complexities of building trust in Artificial Intelligence (AI). The topic for the event was centred around a recently published report that Tortoise and Kainos collaborated on, with the help of over 20 leading experts in ethical and responsible AI: a piece of work that explores how the misuse of artificial intelligence can be addressed to build a future of trust for everyone. For this event, we invited some of the reports’ contributing experts to help us unpack some of these challenges. What? Beyond the three hypotheses that our report puts forward, education was discussed as a key component to creating trust: Dr. David Leslie, pointed out that we need upskilling in terms of understanding what goes on under the hood, but also need some ethical vocabularies to evaluate impacts of AI. A “groundswell of education” is needed, said Tim Gordon. AI Network member, Natalie Lafferty, noted that in education spaces we really need to understand the implications of all this given the potential harms from misuse. We also need something to stimulate learning in the long term says Nell Watson, Chair of ECPAIS Transparency Expert Focus Group at the IEEE – a thought that resonated with suggestions in the chat that called for more imaginative ways to provide education about AI; might we see a gamification of these conversations to help young people learn? When it comes to ethical best practice, many of the members and experts on the call felt we are still in murky waters: standards, though beginning to emerge, are urgently needed to help solidify trustworthiness across the wide range of AI practitioners and products. Who? The AI ethicist, a new professional role that may help to improve trust in those who develop AI systems, was called into question by Dr. Emma Ruttkamp-Bloem. She suggested that we really need to ask who this person is? But professionalisation is not the only factor; if we are looking to measure impacts, David felt that we need to prioritise stakeholders who are impacted by AI usage. Many existing efforts to establish guard rails around AI development with ethics are not inclusive enough: “the table belongs to everybody from the beginning”, said Emma. This raised the question of whether the current conversation is dominated by Western perspectives – a view that resonated with many audience members, including Abeba Birhane who noted that Africans are notably not present in many of these kinds of conversation. Why? Corporate carrot and stick; Tim Gordon and Nell both felt there is a) a business incentive and b) a regulatory hammer that will push corporations to be proactive about ethical AI practices. The scene is also being set for heightened public awareness about AI: as artificial intelligence becomes increasingly powerful and embedded into our everyday lives, we may see a moment of sustained moral panic, said Nell. But Dr. David Leslie, wants us to be cautious though about how we approach the future of technology: let’s not be too hasty to anthropomorphise it. What next? For true democratic governance of AI, we need to step back and think about longer term patterns that are structural, says David. Citizen consultations and understanding how actual users are impacted by AI technologies emerged as a possible route to enable a greater well-placed trust across the board.   Illustration: Laurie Avon for Tortoise editor and invited experts Luke GbedemahReporter, Tortoise Dr David LeslieDirector of Ethics and Responsible Innovation Research, The Alan Turing Institute Nell WatsonChair of ECPAIS Transparency Expert Focus Group, IEEE Peter CampbellData & AI Practice Director, Kainos Tim GordonPartner, Best Practice AI

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How can responsible businesses ensure they approach AI the right way?

This is a digital-only ThinkIn.Businesses face a number of obstacles when it comes to adopting or absorbing more artificial intelligence. From the availability of talent to making a financial case for investment; these challenges demand unique and sector-specific solutions. Almost all companies have an incentive to adopt, and they do face some common challenges when it comes to doing so responsibly; not least creating trust, appropriate governance and navigating regulation. How can businesses ensure that they approach adoption in a way that protects stakeholders, observes regulation and puts value for their people at the centre of AI projects? editor and invited experts Alexi MostrousEditor, Tortoise Media Anand RaoGlobal Head of AI, PwC Caroline GorskiGroup Director of RÂČ Data Labs, Rolls Royce

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What will life be like in 2041? with Kai-Fu Lee

This is a digital-only ThinkIn.How will AI change the world over the next 20 years? We’re told the technology has the power to transform humanity, but will it precipitate a cleaner, more connected utopia, or something altogether more sinister? Every part of our lives will be affected – how we communicate and learn, how we live, work and play. There are few people in the world who understand AI better than Kai-Fu Lee, one of the world’s leading computer scientists, former president of Google China and bestselling author of AI Superpowers. In his latest book AI 2041, Lee teams up with celebrated novelist Chen Qiufan to tell the stories and the science behind our AI-driven future.  editor James HardingCo-founder and Editor

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Will technology widen the power gap? In conversation with Azeem Azhar

This is a newsroom ThinkIn. In-person and digital-only tickets are available.Azeem Azhar, writer, entrepreneur and creator of the hit Exponential View newsletter and podcast – argues that accelerating technology risks leaving our social institutions behind, with devastating implications for our way of life. His newsletter, Exponential View is regarded as one of the best researched and most thought-provoking newsletters in tech. In his new book, Azhar draws on nearly three decades of conversations with the world’s leading thinkers, to outline models that explain the effects technology is having on society. New technology, he shows, is developing at an increasing, exponential rate. But human-built institutions – from our businesses to our political norms – can only ever adapt at a slower, incremental pace. The result is an ‘exponential gap’ – between the power of new technology and our ability to keep up.  Pre-order Azeem’s book Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It. editor Alexi MostrousInvestigations Editor

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The Tortoise Cyber Summit

“I think that AI will be a technological revolution on the scale of the agricultural, the industrial, the computer revolution.”OpenAI Advert Sam Altmann is one of the founders of OpenAI, an American technology company which is taking the world by storm.  It specialises in Artificial Intelligence: machines which are designed to perform any task a human being is capable of.  Alexi Mostrous writes Tortoise’s tech newsletter. He says OpenAI was set up by a group of people who were worried about the direction that advanced artificial intelligence was heading. “OpenAI was set up in 2015 by this dream team of Silicon Valley pioneers. So Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Peter Teal, the founder of PayPal. They came together and, put in collectively, I think it was a billion dollars to start this nonprofit organization called OpenAI. AI was developing a really, really quick pace, and they wanted a nonprofit to be at the forefront of that development to make sure that it was developed in a safe way. So, so they said at some point in the next, you know, five years, 15 years, 50 years, we’re going to reach a point where artificial intelligence is as intelligent as human intelligence, and that is fundamentally a really dangerous position for the world to be. Like, think Terminator Two type destruction.”Alexi Mostrous The most striking product that OpenAI has created is ChatGPT, an AI-powered chatbot which can create a response to whatever you ask it
 “The question isn’t what can it do? It’s like, what can’t it do? Because  it can code for you. It can write an essay, it can mark an essay, it can write a screenplay, a comedy sketch, a poem. It’s pretty impressive. You can ask it very, very detailed things like write a poem about a horse in the style of William Shakespeare and like within two seconds you’ve got a sonnet about a horse. It’s pretty, pretty mad.”Alex Mostrous It’s so good that just over a week after launching, ChatGPT had more than a million regular users
 and it began to get the likes of Microsoft and Google worried. *** “Artificial Intelligence has been around for years now
”Chat Bot SFX 
 But the technology that OpenAI has been developing is leagues ahead of anything we’ve seen before. “The key difference between the products that Open AI are producing and current or mainstream AI that you might see in products like Siri  is that it’s on a different scale in terms of intelligence and, and data points. So ChatGPT uses an exponentially greater number of data points to create the answers that it’s producing. So it’s a real step change in sophistication. It’s just like comparing a remote control car that you might give to a three year old with a Ferrari.”Alexi Mostrous ChatGPT could replace traditional search engines, which is why Google executives have issued a ‘code red’ for the company
 “Google is pretty terrified of all. because Google search has been so dominant for years and years and years, and suddenly this AI has come along that could pose a real threat. So what we’re gonna see from Google is that they’ve got their own technology to rival open AI’s technology, but they haven’t really been releasing it very fast until now. But now they’re under huge pressure to get those AI products outta the door. So in the next 18 months, you’re gonna. All the major big tech companies, I think pushing out AI based products.”Alexi Mostrous When we asked ChatGPT if it would replace Google search, it replied with this message: “Chatbots often rely on search engines. So while they may provide a useful service, they are not a threat to search engines like Google.”Chat Bot SFX However, one of its creators, Sam Altman, disagreed
 “With the quality of of language models we’ll see in the coming years you know there will be like a serious challenge to Google for the first time for for a search product.”Sam Altman Microsoft has jumped at the opportunity to capitalise on OpenAIs technology and sees it as a chance to overtake its rival, Google. In 2019 the company invested $1 billion in OpenAI. Then in January of this year, Microsoft announced another $10 billion of investment. A clear sign that OpenAI’s technology is headed for big things. So could a world where machines do the jobs of humans be closer than we think? *** Artificial Intelligence is already transforming the way we live and work but OpenAI’s supporters say it could be a force for good:  “Doctors or nurses that they spent 40 to 60 percent of their working hours for documentation then I mean this we want to direct to the machine so that they have more times with the patients you see if we only use it for rationalisation that they then later on I mean twice as many patients.”DW News Here’s Alexi Mostrous again
 “I think everyone knows that AI, and especially AI of the sort that you’ve seen in ChatGPT is gonna have an enormous, massive, huge effect on how we work. Thousands, millions of people are going to lose their jobs because of AI, and almost equal numbers are gonna gain jobs because of the opportunities that AI might create. But there’s no doubt that there’s going to be a massive shift because of AI technology. What is unclear at the moment is what sort of jobs will be replaced. So the ones most at risk are the sort of low level jobs. So let’s say you are a 22 year old copywriter for an advertising agency like that job gone.”Alexi Mostrous Companies like OpenAI are all too aware of what could happen if humans lose control of the technology. Here’s OpenAI founder Sam Altman again: “The alignment problem is like we’re going to make this incredibly powerful system and like be really bad if it doesn’t do what we want or or if it sort of has you know goals that are either in conflict with ours and many Sci-Fi movies about what happens there or goals where it just like doesn’t care about us that much and so the alignment problem is how do we build AGI that that does what is in the best interest of humanity.”Sam Altman Advanced artificial intelligence being developed by companies like OpenAI needs to be handled carefully if it’s going to enhance our lives rather than take over them. This episode was written and mixed by Rebecca Moore.

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Toxicity in tech: Why are Google’s leading AI ethics researchers being ‘silenced’?

“I think that AI will be a technological revolution on the scale of the agricultural, the industrial, the computer revolution.”OpenAI Advert Sam Altmann is one of the founders of OpenAI, an American technology company which is taking the world by storm.  It specialises in Artificial Intelligence: machines which are designed to perform any task a human being is capable of.  Alexi Mostrous writes Tortoise’s tech newsletter. He says OpenAI was set up by a group of people who were worried about the direction that advanced artificial intelligence was heading. “OpenAI was set up in 2015 by this dream team of Silicon Valley pioneers. So Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Peter Teal, the founder of PayPal. They came together and, put in collectively, I think it was a billion dollars to start this nonprofit organization called OpenAI. AI was developing a really, really quick pace, and they wanted a nonprofit to be at the forefront of that development to make sure that it was developed in a safe way. So, so they said at some point in the next, you know, five years, 15 years, 50 years, we’re going to reach a point where artificial intelligence is as intelligent as human intelligence, and that is fundamentally a really dangerous position for the world to be. Like, think Terminator Two type destruction.”Alexi Mostrous The most striking product that OpenAI has created is ChatGPT, an AI-powered chatbot which can create a response to whatever you ask it
 “The question isn’t what can it do? It’s like, what can’t it do? Because  it can code for you. It can write an essay, it can mark an essay, it can write a screenplay, a comedy sketch, a poem. It’s pretty impressive. You can ask it very, very detailed things like write a poem about a horse in the style of William Shakespeare and like within two seconds you’ve got a sonnet about a horse. It’s pretty, pretty mad.”Alex Mostrous It’s so good that just over a week after launching, ChatGPT had more than a million regular users
 and it began to get the likes of Microsoft and Google worried. *** “Artificial Intelligence has been around for years now
”Chat Bot SFX 
 But the technology that OpenAI has been developing is leagues ahead of anything we’ve seen before. “The key difference between the products that Open AI are producing and current or mainstream AI that you might see in products like Siri  is that it’s on a different scale in terms of intelligence and, and data points. So ChatGPT uses an exponentially greater number of data points to create the answers that it’s producing. So it’s a real step change in sophistication. It’s just like comparing a remote control car that you might give to a three year old with a Ferrari.”Alexi Mostrous ChatGPT could replace traditional search engines, which is why Google executives have issued a ‘code red’ for the company
 “Google is pretty terrified of all. because Google search has been so dominant for years and years and years, and suddenly this AI has come along that could pose a real threat. So what we’re gonna see from Google is that they’ve got their own technology to rival open AI’s technology, but they haven’t really been releasing it very fast until now. But now they’re under huge pressure to get those AI products outta the door. So in the next 18 months, you’re gonna. All the major big tech companies, I think pushing out AI based products.”Alexi Mostrous When we asked ChatGPT if it would replace Google search, it replied with this message: “Chatbots often rely on search engines. So while they may provide a useful service, they are not a threat to search engines like Google.”Chat Bot SFX However, one of its creators, Sam Altman, disagreed
 “With the quality of of language models we’ll see in the coming years you know there will be like a serious challenge to Google for the first time for for a search product.”Sam Altman Microsoft has jumped at the opportunity to capitalise on OpenAIs technology and sees it as a chance to overtake its rival, Google. In 2019 the company invested $1 billion in OpenAI. Then in January of this year, Microsoft announced another $10 billion of investment. A clear sign that OpenAI’s technology is headed for big things. So could a world where machines do the jobs of humans be closer than we think? *** Artificial Intelligence is already transforming the way we live and work but OpenAI’s supporters say it could be a force for good:  “Doctors or nurses that they spent 40 to 60 percent of their working hours for documentation then I mean this we want to direct to the machine so that they have more times with the patients you see if we only use it for rationalisation that they then later on I mean twice as many patients.”DW News Here’s Alexi Mostrous again
 “I think everyone knows that AI, and especially AI of the sort that you’ve seen in ChatGPT is gonna have an enormous, massive, huge effect on how we work. Thousands, millions of people are going to lose their jobs because of AI, and almost equal numbers are gonna gain jobs because of the opportunities that AI might create. But there’s no doubt that there’s going to be a massive shift because of AI technology. What is unclear at the moment is what sort of jobs will be replaced. So the ones most at risk are the sort of low level jobs. So let’s say you are a 22 year old copywriter for an advertising agency like that job gone.”Alexi Mostrous Companies like OpenAI are all too aware of what could happen if humans lose control of the technology. Here’s OpenAI founder Sam Altman again: “The alignment problem is like we’re going to make this incredibly powerful system and like be really bad if it doesn’t do what we want or or if it sort of has you know goals that are either in conflict with ours and many Sci-Fi movies about what happens there or goals where it just like doesn’t care about us that much and so the alignment problem is how do we build AGI that that does what is in the best interest of humanity.”Sam Altman Advanced artificial intelligence being developed by companies like OpenAI needs to be handled carefully if it’s going to enhance our lives rather than take over them. This episode was written and mixed by Rebecca Moore.

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The Global AI Summit

“I think that AI will be a technological revolution on the scale of the agricultural, the industrial, the computer revolution.”OpenAI Advert Sam Altmann is one of the founders of OpenAI, an American technology company which is taking the world by storm.  It specialises in Artificial Intelligence: machines which are designed to perform any task a human being is capable of.  Alexi Mostrous writes Tortoise’s tech newsletter. He says OpenAI was set up by a group of people who were worried about the direction that advanced artificial intelligence was heading. “OpenAI was set up in 2015 by this dream team of Silicon Valley pioneers. So Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Peter Teal, the founder of PayPal. They came together and, put in collectively, I think it was a billion dollars to start this nonprofit organization called OpenAI. AI was developing a really, really quick pace, and they wanted a nonprofit to be at the forefront of that development to make sure that it was developed in a safe way. So, so they said at some point in the next, you know, five years, 15 years, 50 years, we’re going to reach a point where artificial intelligence is as intelligent as human intelligence, and that is fundamentally a really dangerous position for the world to be. Like, think Terminator Two type destruction.”Alexi Mostrous The most striking product that OpenAI has created is ChatGPT, an AI-powered chatbot which can create a response to whatever you ask it
 “The question isn’t what can it do? It’s like, what can’t it do? Because  it can code for you. It can write an essay, it can mark an essay, it can write a screenplay, a comedy sketch, a poem. It’s pretty impressive. You can ask it very, very detailed things like write a poem about a horse in the style of William Shakespeare and like within two seconds you’ve got a sonnet about a horse. It’s pretty, pretty mad.”Alex Mostrous It’s so good that just over a week after launching, ChatGPT had more than a million regular users
 and it began to get the likes of Microsoft and Google worried. *** “Artificial Intelligence has been around for years now
”Chat Bot SFX 
 But the technology that OpenAI has been developing is leagues ahead of anything we’ve seen before. “The key difference between the products that Open AI are producing and current or mainstream AI that you might see in products like Siri  is that it’s on a different scale in terms of intelligence and, and data points. So ChatGPT uses an exponentially greater number of data points to create the answers that it’s producing. So it’s a real step change in sophistication. It’s just like comparing a remote control car that you might give to a three year old with a Ferrari.”Alexi Mostrous ChatGPT could replace traditional search engines, which is why Google executives have issued a ‘code red’ for the company
 “Google is pretty terrified of all. because Google search has been so dominant for years and years and years, and suddenly this AI has come along that could pose a real threat. So what we’re gonna see from Google is that they’ve got their own technology to rival open AI’s technology, but they haven’t really been releasing it very fast until now. But now they’re under huge pressure to get those AI products outta the door. So in the next 18 months, you’re gonna. All the major big tech companies, I think pushing out AI based products.”Alexi Mostrous When we asked ChatGPT if it would replace Google search, it replied with this message: “Chatbots often rely on search engines. So while they may provide a useful service, they are not a threat to search engines like Google.”Chat Bot SFX However, one of its creators, Sam Altman, disagreed
 “With the quality of of language models we’ll see in the coming years you know there will be like a serious challenge to Google for the first time for for a search product.”Sam Altman Microsoft has jumped at the opportunity to capitalise on OpenAIs technology and sees it as a chance to overtake its rival, Google. In 2019 the company invested $1 billion in OpenAI. Then in January of this year, Microsoft announced another $10 billion of investment. A clear sign that OpenAI’s technology is headed for big things. So could a world where machines do the jobs of humans be closer than we think? *** Artificial Intelligence is already transforming the way we live and work but OpenAI’s supporters say it could be a force for good:  “Doctors or nurses that they spent 40 to 60 percent of their working hours for documentation then I mean this we want to direct to the machine so that they have more times with the patients you see if we only use it for rationalisation that they then later on I mean twice as many patients.”DW News Here’s Alexi Mostrous again
 “I think everyone knows that AI, and especially AI of the sort that you’ve seen in ChatGPT is gonna have an enormous, massive, huge effect on how we work. Thousands, millions of people are going to lose their jobs because of AI, and almost equal numbers are gonna gain jobs because of the opportunities that AI might create. But there’s no doubt that there’s going to be a massive shift because of AI technology. What is unclear at the moment is what sort of jobs will be replaced. So the ones most at risk are the sort of low level jobs. So let’s say you are a 22 year old copywriter for an advertising agency like that job gone.”Alexi Mostrous Companies like OpenAI are all too aware of what could happen if humans lose control of the technology. Here’s OpenAI founder Sam Altman again: “The alignment problem is like we’re going to make this incredibly powerful system and like be really bad if it doesn’t do what we want or or if it sort of has you know goals that are either in conflict with ours and many Sci-Fi movies about what happens there or goals where it just like doesn’t care about us that much and so the alignment problem is how do we build AGI that that does what is in the best interest of humanity.”Sam Altman Advanced artificial intelligence being developed by companies like OpenAI needs to be handled carefully if it’s going to enhance our lives rather than take over them. This episode was written and mixed by Rebecca Moore.
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