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Pedro Domingos - Five Way Interview

Pedro Domingos (@pmddomingos) is a renowned AI researcher, tech industry insider, and Professor Emeritus of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. Hs most recent book is 2040: A Silicon Valley Satire.

Why AI? 

AI is the defining technology of our time. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, is not kidding when he says that AI could be bigger than fire or the wheel. Using and governing AI is going to be a central part of our lives, jobs, politics and culture from now on.

Why this book?

Every one of us needs to understand AI and the issues surrounding it. Not at the level of an expert, but enough to figure out what we can do with it, what we want from it, and how to get there. And after writing a non-fiction book and talking to people from all walks of life about it, I've come to the conclusion that the best way to communicate what AI really is is by writing a story that illustrates it. Also, so much in the tech world today, from the AI hype and fear to the political and cultural currents surrounding it, is so ripe for satire that I couldn't help writing it. It was some of the greatest fun I've ever had, and I hope readers enjoy it as well. 

Do you think we could ever see, if not a PresiBot, AI used to change the nature of democracy?

We will, and if we don't, we're in trouble. Today's democracy is based on 18th-century technology. Why are society's most important decisions made by a few hundred representatives of the people, with serious cognitive limitations and conflicts of interest, who only hear from us every few years via the ballot box? In 2040, PresiBot 2.0 is crowdsourced in real time from what voters say and want. Your model is your representative, and it has all the time for politics that you don't. AI combines our intelligences into a larger collective intelligence - that is its real promise. Just pray that autocrats don't make better use of it than democracies do and come out on top. So far it's not looking good.

What’s next?

Right now people are very worried about how AI is going to debase democracy, by flooding social media with disinformation, etc. The irony is that social media is already flooded with disinformation, and it's AI-based filtering that's keeping it at bay. So the first thing we need to do is become aware of this and start treating AI as democracy's defender, not its enemy. And then we need to make the most of it - not just in government, but in our cities, our jobs, and our daily life.

What’s exciting you at the moment?

We're at a critical juncture in the history of AI. We finally have the data and computing power to go all the way to human-level AI and beyond, but we don't have learning algorithms that are as good as the human brain's yet. Transformers and large language models are great, but they won't get us there - reliability and generalizability will continue to elude them. So I'm very excited about my current research, which tries to overcome these problems by combining ideas from neural networks and symbolic AI. 2040 gives a hint of this in its notion of 'intelligence propagation' - the new technology PresiBot is based on - but it's just a teaser. So stay tuned!

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Interview by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

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