Person
2 episodes · 32 quoted claims
Kahn says Google's search links prompt users to consider where information comes from, which generative AI chatbot answers do not.
“one of the good things about Google is at least you have these links, so you have to think about, you know, where's the information coming from?”
Kahn says Jeff Bezos banned PowerPoint presentations at Amazon because he worried that bullet points produced sloppy thinking.
“That's why Jeff Bezos had famously kind of banned PowerPoint presentations at Amazon because he was very worried about the kind of sloppy thinking”
Kahn says AI companies have little incentive to design their products to discourage overuse.
“the companies developing the product have no incentive really to get you not to use it.”
Kahn says he does not believe AI will cause mass unemployment, though he expects most jobs to change.
“I'm not a big believer in the idea that we're gonna see mass unemployment from AI.”
Kahn predicts that today's need for prompt engineering skills will shrink within about ten years as AI systems improve.
“I don't think that's gonna necessarily be true in ten years, because I think we will have perfected away some of that, optimized away some of the need for that.”
Kahn says NASA found it could keep astronauts vigilant around automated systems only by introducing faults at random intervals.
“Except by introducing faults at like random intervals so that the people were constantly on guard, which was an interesting insight.”
Kahn cites studies of men left alone with Amazon's Alexa who became abusive toward the female-voiced assistant and sometimes carried those habits into real relationships.
“Particularly, there's some interesting studies about men who have been left alone with Alexa, um, basically the Amazon digital assistant.”
Kahn says pressure on Amazon led to a parent-enabled Alexa mode that responds only when a child is polite.
“it's one of the reasons there was actually some pressure put on Amazon to introduce a mode to Alexa that a parent can turn on, where the Alexa will only respond if the child is polite”
Kahn names drug discovery as perhaps the biggest current opportunity for AI.
“I think drug discovery is maybe the biggest opportunity”
Kahn cites a Google Olympics ad in which a child's fan letter was written with AI as an example of AI used where human connection matters, and says it drew backlash.
“I think there's a great example with that Google Olympics ad where they had the kid writing the fan letter”
Kahn says his first career ambition was to become an archaeologist.
“I wanted to be an archeologist at one point.”
OpenAI's ChatGPT debuted in November 2022, after which AI became a full-time beat for journalists at Fortune and other publications.
“And then with ChatGPT's debut in November 2022, the whole space has exploded so tremendously that it is now a full-time beat.”
Fortune published a cover story by Jeremy Kahn on OpenAI and the creation of ChatGPT in January 2023.
“Fortune assigned me a large cover story about OpenAI and the process that had led to the creation of ChatGPT, which came out in January 2023.”
Kahn says OpenAI's GPT-4o demo was clearly designed to resemble Samantha, the AI in the movie Her.
“the demo for GPT 4.0, which was one of OpenAI's latest models, was very much clearly they tried to design the system to be a little bit like Samantha in the movie.”
There was a controversy over whether OpenAI deliberately mimicked Scarlett Johansson's voice, which voiced Samantha in Her, in its GPT-4o assistant.
“there's this whole controversy about whether they deliberately tried to mimic Scarlett Johansson's voice or not.”
When the chatbot service Replika disabled spicier conversations, many users were upset and felt bereft, according to Kahn.
“when Replica at one point turned off the ability of these chatbots to have sort of spicier conversations, a lot of users were really up in arms.”
Kahn says some studies suggest AI chatbots give emotional uplift to lonely people, but none has compared them against having human friends.
“if you really are a lonely person, that if you have no one in your life to talk to, that having the AI chatbot is potentially a positive”
Artificial general intelligence is defined as an AI system with all the cognitive abilities of a human being, and has been a goal of the AI field since its founding.
“AGI or artificial general intelligence is the idea of an AI system that would have all of the cognitive abilities across the board of a human being.”
Kahn does not expect the algorithmic innovation needed for AGI within three to five years, but thinks it is possible within ten to twenty years.
“I do not see it imminently on the horizon in the next three to five years. I think if you went out ten years, perhaps, or certainly if you went out twenty years”
Some AI researchers once believed that simply scaling up large language models would produce complex reasoning and planning, a view Kahn says few now hold.
“There was a definite school of thought among a certain group of AI researchers that all you needed was to keep scaling up the current large language models”
Kahn said AI agents did not yet exist in 2024 but could debut before year's end or early the next year, handling tasks like purchasing and reservations.
“AI agents we don't really have yet, but everybody says they're working on them and there's some indication that they may be debuting even before the end of this year.”
Kahn says the EU's AI Act requires that humans be told when they are interacting with an AI system.
“in the EU's AI Act that is now in full force is that if you have a human interacting with an AI system, the human should always know that they're interacting with the AI system.”
Kahn spoke with NASA's Jessica Marquez, who researches human factors engineering, the study of how humans work with automated systems.
“I spent some time with this woman Jessica Marquez at NASA who is does a lot of their research on what they call human factor engineering”
According to NASA research cited by Kahn, humans who only monitor automated systems perform badly because they cannot stay vigilant for long.
“if you put a human in a in this babysitting role, they almost always perform very badly. They can't remain vigilant for that long.”
Kahn recommends that humans write first drafts and then have AI critique them, to avoid de-skilling.
“the human should always do the first draft. Instead of outsourcing the first draft always to the machine, and then you act as the editor of that draft”
Before generative AI, predictive AI systems in retail were used to decide worker scheduling, removing autonomy from store managers, according to Kahn.
“they were deciding, you know, which workers worked best with which other workers based on data.”
Kahn says some schools have banned ChatGPT and similar tools, which he considers a mistake; he prefers integrating AI with clear rules.
“I do not think you should ban the use of the technology, which some schools have.”
In a flipped classroom, lessons are delivered at home and practice happens in class, a setup Kahn says could use AI tutors for feedback.
“I talk a little bit in the book about implementing flipped classrooms, where essentially the delivery of the material takes place at home”
Kahn says chatbot companies pay news organizations to license data, and publishers have negotiated for more prominent display of their stories.
“the news organizations have been negotiating, oh, but we want our news stories displayed more prominently by the chatbot.”
Kahn cites Cornell University studies finding chatbots are much more persuasive than human salespeople.
“There have been some very interesting studies out of Cornell University on how persuasive chatbots are. And it turns out they're extremely persuasive”
Kahn says voice clones and deepfakes have influenced elections around the world and begun to play a small role in the US.
“There have been a number of cases of voice clones and deep fakes that have had influence on elections around the world.”
Kahn says he did not use AI to write Mastering AI, only occasionally for phrase finding, because it could not match his conversational voice.
“I did not use it to write the book. And people are always really surprised and they say, why not?”