The Turing Lectures: The future of generative AI
AI Summary
Summary in Outline Form
- Introduction
- Host: Hurry Su, Research Application Manager at the Turing Institute
- Event: Last Turing lecture of 2023, first hybrid Turing lecture
- Audience: Mix of returning attendees and newcomers
- Turing Lectures: Flagship series since 2016, featuring data science and AI experts
- Turing Institute: National Institute for data science and AI, named after Alan Turing
- Discourse Format: Includes a Q&A session and a silent period before the lecture begins
- Background on AI
- AI’s slow progress until the 21st century
- Machine learning breakthroughs around 2005
- Misconceptions about machine learning
- Importance of training data
- Classification tasks and their applications (e.g., Tesla’s self-driving mode)
- Neural networks inspired by brain’s neurons
- Factors for AI’s advancement: scientific advances, big data, and cheap computing power
- Large Language Models (LLMs)
- GPT-3’s impact and its 175 billion parameters
- Training data: 500 billion words from the web
- LLMs as powerful autocomplete tools
- Emergent capabilities beyond training
- Issues with LLMs: getting things wrong, bias, toxicity, copyright, GDPR, and limitations outside training data
- General AI
- Definitions and types of General AI:
- Full general intelligence: Machines capable of any human task
- Cognitive tasks: Understanding and reasoning
- Language-based tasks: Any task communicable in language
- Augmented LLMs: LLMs with specialized subroutines
- Current state of AI: Strong in natural language processing, but lacking in other dimensions of intelligence
- Machine Consciousness
- Debate over AI sentience
- Consciousness as the “hard problem”
- AI’s lack of subjective experience and mental life
- Q&A Highlights
- AI’s energy consumption and climate change
- Responsibility for AI’s errors
- AI-generated content and potential feedback loops
- Combining symbolic AI with big AI
- Future directions: multimodal AI, virtual reality, and entertainment
- Human beings compared to LLMs
- Conclusion
- Acknowledgment of the Turing lecture series
- Upcoming Christmas lecture at the Royal Institution