The Rise of The Machines: John Etchemendy and Fei-Fei Li on Our AI Future | Uncommon Knowledge

the year was 1956 and the place was Dartmouth College in a research proposal a math professor used a term that was then entirely new and entirely fanciful artificial intelligence there's nothing fanciful about AI anymore the directors of the Stanford Institute for human- centered artificial intelligence John aimi and Fay Fe Lee on uncommon knowledge now [Music] welcome to uncommon knowledge I'm Peter Robinson philosopher John chendi served from 2000 to 2017 as Provost here at Stanford University Dr ermeni received his undergraduate degree from the University of Nevada before earning his Doctorate in philosophy at Stanford he earned

that doctorate in 1983 and became a member of the Stanford philosophy Department the very next year he's the author of a number of books including the 1990 volume the concept of logical consequence since stepping down as provos Dr atrend has held a number of positions at Stanford including and for our purposes today this is the relevant position co-director of the Stanford Institute for human centered artificial intelligence born in Beijing Dr Fe Lee moved to this country at the age of 15 she received her undergraduate degree from Princeton and a doctorate in El electrical engineering from

the California Institute of Technology now a professor of computer science here at Stanford Dr Lee is the founder once again of the Stanford Institute for human- centered artificial intelligence Dr Lee's Memoir published just last year the world's I see curiosity exploration and Discovery at the dawn of AI John endi and F Fe Lee thank you for making the time to join me thank you for inviting us I would say that I'm going to ask a dumb question but I'm actually going to ask a question that is right at the top of my form what is

artificial intelligence I have seen the term a hundred times a day for what several years now I have yet to find a con a succinct and satisfying explanation let's see well let's go to the philosopy here's a man who's professionally rigorous but here's a woman who actually knows the answer actually knows the answer so now let Faith answer and then I will give you a different answer oh really all right okay uh Peter used the word succinct and I'm sweating here so because uh artificial intelligence by today is already a collection of um of methods

and tools that summarizes the overall uh area of computer science that has to do with data um pattern recognition decision making um in you you know natural language in images in videos in robotics in speech so it's really a collection at the heart of artificial intelligence is statistical modeling such as machine learning using computer programs but uh today artificial intelligence truly is an umbrella term that covers many things that we're starting to feel familiar about for example language intelligence language modeling or speech or Vision John I you and I both knew John McCarthy right who

came to Stanford after after he wrote that used the term coined the term artificial intelligence the now the late John McCarthy and I confess to you who knew him as I did that I'm a little suspicious of the term because I knew JN and John liked to be provocative and I am thinking to myself wait a moment we're still dealing with ones and zeros computers are calculating machines means artificial intelligence is a is a marketing term so no it's it's not really a marketing term so I will give it give you an answer that is

more like what John would have given all right and that is uh it's it's the field the subfield of computer science that attempts to create machines that can accomplish tasks that seem to require intelligence so the early you know early artificial intelligence were systems that that played chess or Checkers even you know very very simple things now John who as you know if you knew him uh was uh ambitious and he thought that in a Summer Conference at Dartmouth they could solve most of the problems all right can I'm going to come let me name

a couple of very famous events what I'm looking for here I'll name the events we have in 1997 a computer defeats Gary Casper off at chess Big Moment For the First Time big blue an IBM project defeats a human being at chess and not just a human being but Gary caspero who by some measures is one of the half dozen greatest chess players who ever lived and as best I can tell computer scientist said yawn things are getting faster but still and then we have in 2015 a computer defeats go expert Han Fu and the

following year it defeats go Grandmaster Lee sidol I'm not at all sure I'm pronouncing that correctly leol in a five-game match and people say whoa something just happened this time so what I'm looking for here is something something that a Layman like me can latch on to and say Here's the discontinuity here's where we entered a new moment here artificial intelligence am I looking for something that doesn't exist no no I think you're not so so the difference between deep blue and which played chess which played chess deep blue was written using traditional programming techniques

and what deep blue did is it it would for each move for each position of the board it would look down to to all the possible every conceivable decision decision tree to a certain depth I mean obviously you can't go all the way and it would it would have ways of of weigh which ones are best and so then it would say now this is the best move for me at this time that's why in some sense it was not theoretically very interesting the uh the go Alpha go Alpha go which was a Google project

Google project this uses uh uh deep learning it's a neural net it's not explicit explicit programming we don't know you know we don't go into it with an idea of here's the algorithm we're going to use do this and then do this and do this so it was actually quite a surprise particularly alphago not to me but sure no no no but to the public yes to the public yeah but our our colleague I'm going going at this one more time because I really want to understand this I really do our colleague here at Stanford

ZX genen who must be known to both of you physicist here at Stanford and he said to me Peter what you need to understand about the moment when a computer defeated go go which is uh a much more complicated at least in the decision space much much bigger so to speak than chest there are more pieces more Square all right and ZX said to me that whereas chess just did more quickly what a committee of grand Masters would have decided on the computer in go was creative it was pursuing strategies that human beings had never

pursued before is there something to that yeah so there's a famous is getting impatient with me I'm asking such no no you're asking such good question so in the third game of the I think it was the third game of the uh five games there was a move I think it was move 32 32 32 or 35 it's that uh the computer program made a move that really surprised every single go Masters not only Lisa do himself but everybody who's watching that's a very that's a very surprising move I thought I thought it was I

thought it was a mistake in fact even post analyzing how that move came about um the human Masters would say this is completely unexpected and what happens is that um the computers like John says right is um has the learning ability and has the inference ability to think about patterns or to to to um decide on certain movements even outside of uh the trained familiar human Masters uh domain of knowledge in this particular game mayet let me let me let me expand on that thing is these deep neural Nets are supremely good pattern recognition systems

but the patterns they recognize the patterns they learn to recognize are not necessarily exactly the patterns that humans recognize so it was seeing something about that position and it made a move that because of the the patterns that it recognized in the book in in the board that made no sense from a human standpoint in fact all of the all all of the lessons and how to play go tell you never make a move that close to the edge that that quickly and uh so everybody thought it made a mistake and then it proceeded to

win and and I think the way to understand that is it's just seeing patterns that we don't see it's computing patterns that that is not traditionally human and it has the capacity to compute okay I'm trying to we're already entering this territory but I am trying really hard to tease out the wait a moment these are still just machines running zeros and ones bigger and bigger memory faster and faster ability to calculate but we're still dealing with machines that run zeros and ones that's one strand and the other strand is as you well know 2001

Space Odyssey where the computer takes over the ship open the pod bay doors H I'm sorry Dave I'm afraid I can't do that okay we'll keep we'll keep we'll come to this soon enough F Fe Lee in your Memoir the worlds I see quote I believe our civilization stands on the cusp of a technological Revolution with the power to reshape Life as We Know It Revolution reshape Life as we know it now you're a man whose whole academic training is in rigor are you going to let her get away with with this over kind of

wild overstatement no I don't think it's an overstatement oh I think she's right he told me to write the book mind you Peter it's a technology that is extremely powerful that will allow us and is allowing us to get computers to do things we never could could have programmed them to do and and it will change everything but it's like what a lot of people have said it's like electricity or it's like like the steam Revolution it's not something necessarily to be afraid of it's not that it's going to suddenly take over the world that's

not what F was saying well right it it's it's a powerful tool that will revolutionize Industries and human the way we live but the word revolution is not that it's a conscious being it's just a powerful tool that changes things I would find that reassuring if a few pages later Fay had not gone on to write oh no there's no separating the beauty of science from something like say the Manhattan Project close quote nuclear science we can produce abundant energy but it can also produce weapons of indescribable horror uh AI has boogey men of its

own whether it's Killer Robots widespread surveillance or even just automating all 8 billion of us out of our jobs now we could devote an entire program to each of those boogeymen and maybe at some point we should but now that you have scared me even in the act of reassuring me and in fact it throws me that you so eager to reassure me that I think maybe I really should be even more scared than I am let me just go right down here's the Killer Robots let me quote the late Henry Kissinger I'm just going

to put these up and let you you may calm me down if you if you if you can Henry Kissinger if you imagine a war between China and the United States you have artificial intelligence weapons nobody has tested these things on a broad scale and nobody can tell exactly what will happen when AI fighter planes on both sides interact so you are then I'm quoting Henry Kissinger who is not a fool after all so you are then in a world of potentially total destructiveness close quote f f so like I said I'm not uh denying

how powerful these tools are I mean Humanity before AI has already created tools and technology that are very destructive could be very destructive we talk about mahatam project right but uh that doesn't mean that we should collectively decide to use this tool in this destructive way right okay Peter you know think back before you even had heard about artificial intelligence which actually what is 5 years ago this is all happening so fast just just 5 years ago or 10 years ago right remember the the tragic uh incident where uh an Iranian uh passenger plane was

shot down flying over the Persian Gulf uh by an egis system yes yes and one of our ships of our ships an automation an automated system because it had to be automated in order to be humans can't react that fast exactly and uh in this case it for for reasons that I think are quite understandable now that you understand the in incident but it did something that was horrible that's not different in kind from what you can do with a with AI right so we as creators have of these devices or as users of AI

have to be vigilant about what kind of use we put them to and when we decide to put them to one particular use and and and there may be uses you know I'm the military has many good uses for them we have to be vigilant about their doing what we intend them to do rather than doing things that we don't intend them to do so you are announcing a great theme and that theme is that what Dr Fay Lee has invented makes these discipline to which you have dedicated your life philosophy even more important not

less so yeah that's why we're cir makes the human being more important not less so am I making that am I being glib or is that onto so let me tell you let me tell you a story about uh so F used to live next door to me or close to next door to me and and uh I was talking I'm not sure whether that would make me feel more safe or more exposed and and and I was talking to her I was still pris at the time and uh and she said to me you

and John Hennessy started a lot of institutes that brought technology into other parts of the University we need to start an Institute that brings philosophy and ethics and the social sciences into AI because AI is too dangerous to leave it to the computer scientists alone nothing wrong with there are many stories about how hard it was to persuade him when he was provos so you succeeded can I one just one more Boogeyman briefly yeah that and we'll return to that theme that you just gave us there and then we'll get back to the Stanford Institute

I'm quoting you again this is from your Memoir the prospect of just automating all billion of us out of our jobs that's the phrase you used well it turns out that it took me mere seconds using my AI enabled search algorithm search device to find a Goldman Sachs study from last year predicting that in the United States and Europe some 2third of all jobs could be automated at least to some degree so why shouldn't we all be terrified Henry Kissinger World apocalypse all right maybe that's a bit too much but my job so I I

think job uh change is real job change is real with every single technological advances that Humanity human civilization has faced you know that that is real and that's not to be taken lightly uh we also have to be careful with the word job job tends to describe a holistic profession or that a person attaches it his or her income as as well identity identity with but there is also within every job pretty much within every job there are so many tasks you know it's hard to imagine there's one job that has only one singular task

right like um being a professor being a scholar being a doctor being a cook all this job have M multiple tasks what we're seeing is technology is um changing how some of these tasks can be done and it's true as it changes these tasks some of them some part of them uh could be automated it's starting to change how the jobs are and eventually it's going to impact jobs so this is going to be a gradual process and it's very important we stay on top of this this is why human Center Institute was founded is

these questions are profound they're by definition multidisciplinary you know computer scientists alone cannot do all the economic analysis but economists not understanding what the what these computer science um programs do do will not by themselves understand the the shift of the jobs okay John may I tell you go ahead but let me say let me just point something out um the Goldman Sachs study said that such and such percentage of jobs will be automated or can be automated at least in part yes okay now what they're saying is that a certain number of the tasks

that go into a particular research exactly so so Peter you said it only took me a few seconds to go to the computer and find that article guess what that's one of the tasks that would have taken you a lot of time so part of your job has been automated okay now let me tell you a story but also empowered empowered empowered okay fine thank you thank you thank you making me feel good now let me tell you a story all three of us live in California which means all three of us probably have some

friends down in Hollywood and I have a friend who was involved in the writer strike yeah okay and here's the problem to run a sitcom you used to run a writer's room and the writer's room would employ seven a dozen on the Simpson show the cartoon show they'd keep they'd had two a couple of writers rooms running they were employing 20 and these were the last kind of person you'd imagine a computer could replace because they were well-educated and witty and quick with words and you think of computers as just running calculations maybe spreadsheets maybe

maybe someday they can eliminate accountants but writers Hollywood writers and it turns out and my friend Illustrated this for me by saying doing to the artificial intelligence thing where we had a prompt have to skit for Saturday Night Live In which Joe Biden and Donald Trump are playing beer pong 15 seconds now professionals could have tightened it up or made it but it was pretty funny and it was instantaneous and you know what that means that means you don't need F four or five of the seven writers you need a senior writer to assign intelligence

the senior the artificial and you need uh maybe one other writer or two others writers to tighten it up or redraft it it is upon us and your artificial intelligence is going to get bad press when it starts eliminating the jobs of the chattering classes and that has already begun tell me I'm wrong do you know before the Agricultural Revolution something like 80 90% of all the people in the United States were employed on farms right we now now it now it's down to 2% or 3% and and those same Farms that same land is

far far more productive now would you say that your life or anybody's life now was worse off than it was say in the 1890s when everybody was working on the farm no so yes you're right it will have it will change jobs it will make some jobs easier it will make allow us to do things that we could not do before and yes it will allow fewer there will allow fewer people to do more of what they were doing before and and consequently there will be fewer people in that line of work that's true I

is true I also want to just point out two things one is that jobs is always changing and that change is always painful and we're as computer scientists as philosophers also as citizens of the world we should be empathetic of that and nobody is saying we should just ignore that changing pain so this is why we're studying this we're trying to talk to policy makers we're we're we're educating the population in the meantime I think we should give more credit to human creativity in in the face of AI I I I start to use this

uh uh example that's not even AI think about the advanced speaking of Hollywood uh Graphics uh uh technology CGI and all that right the video gaming industry or no just animations and all that right one of meaning of our including our children's favorite animation series is by ji Studio you know uh princess monaki my neighbor tooro um Spirited Away all of these or made during a period where computer Graphics technology is far more advanced than these handdrawn um animations yet they the beauty the creativity the the emotion the uniqueness in these film continue to inspire

and and just entertain Humanity so I think we need to still have that pride and also give the credit to humans let's not forget our creativity and emotion and intelligence is unique it's all going to be taken away by technology thank you I feel slightly reassured I'm still nervous about my job but I feel slightly reassured but you mentioned government a moment ago which leads us to how we should regulate AI let me give you two quotations I'll begin I'm coming to the a quotation from the two of you but I'm going to start with

a recent article in the Wall Street Journal by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and former Senator Phil Phil Graham also of Texas quote the Clinton Administration took a hands-off approach to regulating the early internet and so doing it Unleashed extraordinary economic growth and prosperity the Biden Administration by contrast is impeding innovation in artificial intelligence with aggressive regulation close quote that's them this is you also a recent article in the Wall Street Journal John etchamendy and fay F Lee quote President Biden has signed an executive order on artificial intelligence that demonstrates his administration's commitment to harness

and govern the technology President Biden has set the stage and now it is time for Congress to act Cruz and Graham less regulation endi and Lee B administration's done well now Congress needs to give us even more no all right John so no I I don't agree with that so I believe regular ating any kind of technology is very difficult and you have to be careful not to regulate to soon or not to regulate too late let me give you another example you talked about the internet and it's true uh the the government really was

quite hands off and that's good that's good it worked out it worked out but now let's also think about social media social media uh has has not worked exactly worked out exactly the way we wanted we we originally believed that we were going to have enter a golden age in which friendship comedy yeah well and and everybody would have a voice and you know we could all live together Kumbaya and so forth and that's not what happened no um Jonathan hay has a new book out on the particular pathologies among young people from all of

these social and with not an argument it's an argument but it's based on lots of data yeah so it seems to me that I'm I'm in favor of very lih handed and informed regulation to try to put up sort of bumpers or I don't know what the analogy is guardrails uh for for the technology I am not for uh heavy-handed top- down regulation that that stifles Innovation okay here's here's another let me let me get on to this um you can I'm sure you'll be able to adapt your answer to this question to okay I'm

continuing your Wall Street Journal piece big tech companies can't be left to govern themselves around here Silicon Valley those are fighting words academic institutions should play a leading role in providing trustworthy assessments and benchmarking of these Advanced Technologies we encourage an investment in human capital to bring more talent to the the field of AI with Academia and the government close quote okay now it is mandatory for me to say this so please forgive me my fellow Stanford uh employees apart from anything else why should academic institutions be trusted half the country has lost faith in

academic institutions Dei the whole woke agenda anti-Semitism on campus we've got a Gallop recent Gallop poll showing the proportion of Americans who expressed a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in higher education this year came in at just 36% and that is down in the last 8 years from 57% you are asking us to trust you at the very moment when we believe we have good reason to knock it off yeah trust you okay fa so I'll start with this uh first half of the answer I'm sure JN has a lot to say

I do want to make sure especially wearing the hats of uh co-directors of of Hai when we talk about the relationship between government and Technology we tend to use the word regulation I really really want to double click I want to use the word policy and policy and regulation um are related but not the same when John and I write wrote that Wall Street Journal opinion piece we really are focusing on a piece of policy that is to uh resource public sector AI to Resource Academia because we believe that AI is such a powerful technology

and science and Academia and public sector still has a role to play to uh to create public good and public goods are curiosity driven knowledge exploration our cures for cancers are you know the maps of biodiversity of our globe our you know discovery of Nano materials that we haven't seen before our different ways of expressing in in theater in in writing in Music These are public goods and uh when we are looking when we are collaborating with the government on policy we're focusing on that so I really want to make sure regulation we all have

personal opinion but there's more than regulation in policy yeah so yeah we yeah I look can can let me make one last run at you and in my theory here although I'm asking question that you'd I'm quite sure you'd like to take me out and swap me around at at this point John but this is serious you've got the Stanford Institute for human- centered artificial intelligence and that's because you really think this is important yeah but we live in a democracy and you're going to have to convince a whole lot of people so let me

take one more run at you and then hand it back to you John your article in the Wall Street Journal again we let me repeat this we encourage an investment in human capital to bring more talent to the field of AI with Academia and the Govern government close quote that means money an investment means money and it means taxpayers money here's what Cruz and Graham say in the Wall Street Journal the Biden regulatory policy on AI has everything to do with special interest rent seeking Stanford faculty make well above the national average income we are

sitting at a university with an endowment of tens of billions of dollars John why is not your article in the Wall Street Journal the very kind of rent saking that Senator Cruz and Senator Graham are saying are you kidding Peter let's take another example so one of the greatest policy decisions that this country has ever made was when vavar Bush adviser to at the time President Truman uh convinced he stayed on through Eisenhower as I recall so it's important bipartisan bipartisan exactly no no not it was not partisan issue at all but convinced uh Truman

to set up the NSF for funding National Science Foundation right for funding uh curiosity based research Advanced research at the universities and then not to cut not to you know say that companies don't have any role not to say that government has no role they both have roles but they're different roles and C uh companies are tend to be better at development better at producing products and and tapping into things that can within a year or two or three can can be a product that will be useful uh scientists at at universities don't have that

constraint they don't have to worry about when is this going to be commercial commercial right and and that has that has I think uh had such an incalculable effect on the prosperity of this country on the fact that we are the leader in in every Technology field it's not an accident that we're the leader in every Technology field we weren't we didn't use to be and does it affect your argument if I add it also enabled us or contributed to a victory in the Cold War yeah the weapon systems that that came out of universities

all right well no absolutely and and uh you know president it ended up being a defensive de kind of good you could argue from all kinds of points of view as it was a good Roi for taxpayers money yeah so we're not arguing we're not arguing for higher salaries for faculty or anything of that sort but we think particularly in AI it's gotten to the point where uh facult where where scientists at universities can no longer play in the game because of the cost of the Computing the cost the the inaccessibility of the data that's

why you see all of these developments coming out of companies that's great those are great developments but we need to have also people who are exploring these Technologies without looking at the product without being driven by the the profit motive and then eventually hopefully they will develop discoveries I will make discoveries will will then be commercializable okay I noticed in your book F I was very struck that you said uh I think it was about a decade ago 2015 I think was the that you noticed that you were beginning to lose colleagues to the private

sector yeah I presumably because they just pay so phenomenally well around here in Silicon Valley but then there's also the point that to get to make progress in AI you need an enormous amount of computational power yep and assembling all those ones and zeros is extremely expensive so exactly chat GPT what is the the parent company open AI open AI got started with an initial investment of a billion dollars an initial friends and family capital of a billion dollars is a lot of money even around here okay that's the point you're making yes all right

um it feels to me as though every one of these topics is worth a dayong sem actually I think they are but and by the way the this this has happened before where the science has become so expensive that it could no longer that University level research and researchers could no longer afford to do the science it happened in in high energy physics you know high energy physics used to mean you had a vandag graph generator in your office and that was your accelerator and you know or you can get it you could what you

needed to do and then it no longer was you know the energy levels went were higher and higher and what happened well the federal government stepped in and said we're going to help we're going to build an accelerator Stanford Stanford linear accelerator exactly Sania Labs Lawrence Livermore all these are at least in part Federal establishment CERN uh which is European right well fery lab so it was the first accelerator was was was slack Stanford accelerator Center then fery lab and and so on and so forth now uh CERN is late actually late in the game

and it's it's a European Consortium but the thing is um we could not continue the science without the help of the government in government well there's another then in addition to high energy physics and then bio right especially uh with genetic sequencing and high throughput genomics and by biotech is also changing and now you see a new wave of um biology Labs that are actually heavily funded by the combination of government and philanthropy and all that and that that stepped in to up uh you know supplement what the traditional University model is and so we're

now here with AI and computer excise okay this is we have to do another show on that one alone I think um The Singularity oh good this is good reassuring you both are rolling your eyes wonderful I feel better about this already good Ray kerswell you know exactly where this is going Ray Kur writes a book in 2005 this gets everybody's attention and still scares lots of people to death including me the book is called The Singularity is near and kwell predicts a singularity that will involve and I'm quoting him the merger of human technology

with human intelligence he's not saying the tech will will mimic more and more closely human intelligence he is saying they will merge I set the date for The Singularity representing a profound and disruptive transformation in human capability is 2045 okay that's the first quotation here's the second and this comes from the Stanford course catalog description of the philosophy of artificial intelligence a freshman seminar that was taught last quarter as I recall by one John eimi here here's from the description is it really possible for an artificial system to achieve genuine intelligence thoughts Consciousness emotions what

would that mean John is it possible what would it mean I think answer is actually no and thank goodness you kept me waiting for a moment there I I think the you know the the fantasies that that Ray Kurtz and and others have have uh have been spinning up I guess that's the way to put it are are stem from a lack of understanding of how the human being really works and and don't understand how crucial biology is to the way we work the way we are motivated uh how we get desires how we get

goals how we get how we become humans become people and what AI has done so far AI is is capturing what you might think of as the uh information processing piece of what we do so part of what we do is information processing so it's got the right frontal cortex but hasn't got the left frontal cortex yet yeah it's an oversimplification but yes imagine that on television all right so I actually I actually think it is first of all the date 2045 2045 uh is um is insane that will not happen and secondly it's not

even clear to me that we will ever get that wait I can't believe I'm saying this in his defense I don't think he's saying that 2045 is the day that the machines become conscious beings like humans it's more an inflection point of the power of the technology that is you know um is disrupting the the the society he's late we're already there exactly that's what I'm saying it's uh I think you're being overly generous he I I think that what he means by The Singularity is the date at which we create an artificial intelligence system

that can improve itself and and then get into a cycle a recursive cycle where it becomes a super intelligence yes and I deny that he's playing the 2001 Space Odyssey game here look can I different question but related question in some ways this is a more serious question I think although that's serious too here's the late Henry Kissinger again quote we live in a world which has no philosophy there is no dominant philosophical view so the technologists can run wild they can develop world changing things and there's nobody to say we've got to integrate this

into something all right I'm going to put it crudely again but in China a century ago we still had confusion thought dominant among at least among the educated classes on my very thin understanding of Chinese history in this country until the day before yesterday we still spoke without irony of the judeo-christian tradition which involved certain Concepts about morality what it meant to be human it assumed a belief in God but it turned out you could actually get pretty far along even if you didn't believe in okay and Kissinger is now saying it's all Fallen apart

there's no dominant philosophy this is a serious problem is it not there's nothing to integrate AI into you take his point it's up to the you're the philosopher you're the Buddhist you're the philosopher I think this is a great first of all thank you for that quote I did a read read that quote from uh Henry King I mean this is why we founded a human Center AI Institute these are the fundamental questions that uh Our Generation needs to figure out so that's not just a question that's the question it was one of the fundamental

question it's also one of the fundamental questions that illustrates why universities are still relevant today right and and Peter you know one of the things that that Henry kinger says in that quote is that there is no dominant philosophy there's no one dominant philosophy like the judeo-christian tradition which used to used to be the dominant this a different conversation in Paris in the 12th century for example the University of Paris in order to have in order to take values into account when you're creating an AI system you don't need a dominant tradition I mean there's

a what you need for example for for most ethical Traditions is the Golden Rule still get along with each other even when it comes to deep deep questions of value such as this we still have enough Common Ground I believe so I heave yet another sigh of relief okay let's talk a little bit we're talking a little bit about a lot of things here but so it is let us speak of many things as as as it is written in Allison Wonderland the Stanford Institute the Stanford Institute for human centered artificial intelligence of which you

are co-directors and I just have two questions and respond as you'd like can you give me some taste some feel for what you're doing now and in some ways more important but more elusive where you'd like to be in just five years say everything in this field is moving so I would my impulse is to say 10 years because it's a rounder number it's too far off in this field F I think what really has happened in the past five years by Stanford High among many things I just want to make sure everybody following you

ha AI Stanford high is the way it's known on this campus yes right go ahead yeah uh is that we have put a stick on the ground for Stanford as well as for everybody that this is a interdisciplinary uh study that AI artificial intelligence is a science of its own it's a powerful tool and what happens is that you can welcome so many discipline to cross-pollinate around the topic of AI or use the tools of AI to make other Sciences happen or to explore other new ideas and that concept of making this an interdisciplinary and

multidisciplinary field is what I think Stanford High brought to Stanford and also hopefully to to the world because like you said computer science is kind of a new field you know only you know the late John McCarthy coined the term you know in the uh late 50s now it's moving so fast everybody feels it's just a niche computer science uh field that's just like making its way into the future but we are saying no l abroad there's so many disciplines that can be put here who competes with the Stanford Institute and human Center design is

there such an Institute at Harvard or Oxford or Beijing I don't I just don't know what those so in the in the five years since we launched there have been a number of similar institutes that have been uh created at other universities we don't see that as competition in any way if these arguments you've been making are valid then you we need them we should Movement we need we need them and part of what we want to do and part of what I think we've succeeded to a certain extent doing is communicating this vision of

uh the importance of keeping the human and and human values at the center when we are developing uh this technology when we are applying this technology uh and we want to communicate that to the world we want other centers that adopt a similar Point standpoint and and importantly I mean one of the things that that I didn't mention is one of the things we try to do is educate and educate for example legislators so that they understand what this technology is what it can do what it can't do so you're traveling to Washington or the

very generous Trustees of this institution are bringing Congressional staff and they're both both both are happening right so fa are you first of all did you teach that course in Stanford hiai or was the Course located in the philosophy department or cross listing I'm just trying to get a feel for what's actually taking place there now yeah it was I actually taught it in the confines of the Hai building okay so it's an hii no it's a philosophy course it's listed as a philosophy course but taught in the a he's the former proost he gets

to he's an inter disciplinary Walkin wonder and your work in AI assisted Healthcare Y is that taking place in Hai or is it at the medical school that's a beauty it's taking place in hii computer science department the medical school if even has collaborators from the law school from the uh political science department so that's the beauty it's deeply interdisciplinary um if I were the Provost I'd say this is starting to sound like something that's about to run a muck doesn't that sound a little too interdisciplinary John don't we need to Define things a little

bit here let me let me tell you let me say something that uh so Steve Dan who was the U chair of our Board of Trustees for many years and and has been a long long time supporter of um of the university in many many ways in fact we are the Denning co-directors of Stanford High Sanford hii um Steve saw five six years ago he said you know AI is going to impact every department at this University and we need to have an Institute that that makes sure that that happens the right way that that

impact um is is does not run a marck where would you like to be in five years what's a what's a course you'd like to be teaching in five years what's a what's a special project I would like to teach a course freshman seminar called the greatest discoveries by AI oh right okay um a last question which I have one last question but that does not mean that it has you each of you has to hold yourself to one last answer because it's a kind of open-ended question I have a theory but all I do

is wander around this campus the two of you are deeply embedded here and you ran the place for 17 years so you'll know more than I will including you may know that my theory is wrong but I'm going to trot it out modest though it may be even so Milton fredman the late Milton Freedman who when I first arrived here was a colleague at the Hoover institution in fact by some miracle his office was on the same hallway as mine and I used to stop in on him from time to time he told me that

he went into economics because he grew up during the Depression and the overriding question in the country at that time was how do we satisfy our material needs there were millions of people without jobs there really were people who had trouble feeding their families all right I think of my own generation which is more or less John's generation you come much later f f thank you and for us I don't know what kind of discussions you had in the dorm room but when I was in college there were bull sessions about the Cold War where

the Russians going the Cold War was real to our generation that was the overriding question how can we defend our way of life how can we defend our fundamental principles all right here's my theory for current students they've grown up in a period of unimaginable Prosperity material needs are just not the problem they have also grown up during a period of relative peace the Cold War ended you could put different the Soviet Union declared itself defunct in 1991 cold war is over at that moment at the latest the overriding question for these kids today is

meaning what is it all for why are we here what does it mean to be human what's the difference between us and the machines and if my little theory is correct then by some miracle this technological Marvel that you have produced will lead to a new flowering of the humanities do you go for that John do I go for it I would go for it uh if it were going to happen did I put that in a slightly sloppy way no I um I think it would be wonderful it's something to hope for uh so

far now now I'm going to be the cynic uh so far what I see in in students is more and more Focus so Stanford students more and more focus on technology on learnu science is still the biggest major at this University yeah and um and we have tried at hii we have actually in uh started a program called embedded ethics where the Cs at the end of ethics is capitalized so it's computer science and uh that'll catch the kids attention no they don't we don't have to catch their attention what what we do is virtually

all of the courses in computer science the introductory courses have ethics components built in so a problem set so you have a problem set this week and that'll have a whole bunch of you know very difficult math problems computer science problems and then it will have a very difficult ethical Challenge and it'll say here's the situation you are programming a computer uh programming a an AI system and and here's the Dilemma now discuss right what what are you going to do so so we're trying to bring I this is this is what Fay wanted we're

trying to bring this is new within last couple years two three years uh we're trying to bring the attention to ethics into the computer science curriculum um and and partly that's because they're not I mean students students tend to follow the path of least resistance well they also let's put again if I'm I'm saying things crudely again and again but someone must say it they follow the money so as long as this Valley that surrounds us rewards brilliant young kids from Stanford with cs degrees as richly as it does and it is amazingly richly they'll

go get CS degrees right well I I do think it's a little crude I I think money is one surrogate measure of also what is advancing in our time you know technology right now truly is one of the biggest drivers of the changes of our of our civilization I when you're talking about what is this generation of students talk about I was just thinking that uh 400 years ago you know when the Scientific Revolution was happening what is in the dorms of course it's all young men in Cambridge or Oxford but that must also be

a very exciting and interesting time of course there wasn't internet and social media to propel the the travel of the knowledge but imagine there was you know this the the the the blossoming of Discovery and of our understanding of the physical world right now we're in that kind of Great era of technological uh blossoming it's a digital Revolution so the the the conversations in the dorm I think it's a blend of the meaning of who we are as humans as well as our relationship to this technology we're building and so it's a it's um so

properly properly taught technology can subsume or embed well philosophy literature of course can can Inspire can and also think about it what follow scientific revolution is a great period of change of political social economical change right and we seeing that not all for the better that's a right and I'm not saying it's necessarily for the better but we are seeing we're we're haven't even peaked the digital Revolution but we're already seeing the political social economic changes so this is again back to Stanford High when we founded it five years ago we believe all this is

happening and and this is an Institute where these kind of conversations ideas debates uh should be taking place education programs should be happening and and that's part of the reason or we did this let me tell you yeah so as you pointed out I I just finished teaching a course called philosophy of artificial intelligence about which I I found out too late I would have asked permission to audit your course John no now you're too old so uh and and about half of the students were computer science students who planned to be computer science Majors

MH another quarter planned to be symbolic systems Majors which is a very is a dis is a major that is related to computer science and and then there was a smattering of others um and and these were people every one of them at the end of the course and I'm not saying this to brag every one of them said this is the best course we've ever taken and why did they say that it it inspired it it made them think it gave them a framework for thinking a framework for trying to address some of these

problems some of the worries that you've brought out today and and how do we think about them and how do we you know not just become panicked because of some science fiction movie that we've we've seen or because we read Ray ctz uh so maybe it's just as well I didn't take the course I'm sure joh would have given me a c minus at best all great inflation so so it's clear that that you know these kids as students are are looking for the uh opening to to think these things and to understand how to

address ethical questions how to address hard philosophical questions um and and that's what they that's what they got out of the course and that's a way of looking for meaning in this time yes it is Dr fay F Lee and Dr John eimi both of the Stanford Institute for human centered artificial intelligence thank you thank you Peter for uncommon knowledge and the Hoover institution and Fox Nation I'm Peter Robinson [Music]