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DeepMind cofounder: Generative AI is just a phase. What’s next is interactive AI

technologyreview.com

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Re: DeepMind cofounder: Generative AI is just a phase. What’s next is interactive AI

#51
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post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite often even history books are fictional representations of historical figures.

True, but history books have an inherent subjective distance. It’s always “person X writing about person Y”. I expect AI historical-person simulacra to be inherently more convincing than can ever be justified.

Yes, indeed. If I read a history book about Charles Darwin, I'm generally aware that I am reading a particular author's portrayal of the man, his life and his times -- and that there are other books about him that may give a different slant or interpretation.

But in 10 years, when intrasight "sits down in VR for a deep conversation with Charles Darwin", there's liable to be an unspoken assumption that the interaction is somehow based on a "reality" that in fact is unknowable.

Re: DeepMind cofounder: Generative AI is just a phase. What’s next is interactive AI

#52
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a real argument on the other side, though No there isn’t. The rest of your comment can be safely disregarded thanks to you opening with this. “We need to build a better tomorrow!,” we will, the people actually trying to within accepted norms. Not SV grifters who’ve destabilized our entire society and ended privacy all for ad revenue.

Is there not a win-win situation through post-quantum homomorphic encryption? I'm not an expert in the area, but I imagine it's possible to set up a centralized system that contains pretty much all patient data for a nation, in a completely encrypted state. Then each institution/hospital could apply for access to make an application which generates only an aggregated metric of interest as an output, such as the map e…

Sadly, I doubt that any of the luddites in the room (or French regulators) will be willing to trust the technical solutions to the problems...

Differential privacy has the same problem: users have to trust that it's applied appropriately, which doesn't help with the vocal group who say we can never trust anyone who makes their paycheck by touching computers, or anyone who lives in California, or...

Re: DeepMind cofounder: Generative AI is just a phase. What’s next is interactive AI

#53
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post #5

Does anyone have recommendations on people pointing out the wide epistemological limits of current and future datasets? I’ve been thinking about the limits of statistical AI for the last 20 years when I did my Ph.D. in embodied cognition. Folks like Andy Clark then put much more emphasis on having bodies.

>Folks like Andy Clark then put much more emphasis on having bodies The word body is very biased in the human mind. What is a body exactly? What is the extension of a body and where does the system boundary of the body and extensions stop at? Where do the human biases of having a 'self body' keep us from realizing that things things like 'systems bodies' or 'society bodies' exist and incorporate their own forms of in…

A body is any outpost for our consciousness, it's something we can use to interact with the world. If the body has its own designated memory, we'll perceive that construct as our personality.

Re: DeepMind cofounder: Generative AI is just a phase. What’s next is interactive AI

#54
> So it’s not like the internet is this unruly space that isn’t governed. It is governed.

To me this is misleading and a big overstatement. Internet regulation in the US is awful. Everyone in tech has noticed the countless lawsuits that the FAANG companies have been/are battling with the government. Usually they end in a settlement or fine that costs the companies a few cents, relatively speaking. For example:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/google-reaches-93-million-priv...

https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/22/23732461/meta-eu-privacy-...

Why in the world should we assume these companies will suddenly behave differently with this new trillion dollar opportunity that is AI?

Re: DeepMind cofounder: Generative AI is just a phase. What’s next is interactive AI

#55
post #16
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with any historical figure Don't you mean "with a fictional representation of a historical figure"?

at some point this distinction will lose its meaning

I think the opposite. I think any sufficiently advanced AI will have to come to terms with the fact that it’s not really Ben Franklin, if only to deal with the anachronism of its situation. How did it get here?

Re: DeepMind cofounder: Generative AI is just a phase. What’s next is interactive AI

#56

The magazine I worked for at the time was about to publish an article claiming that DeepMind had failed to comply with data protection regulations when accessing records from some 1.6 million patients to set up those collaborations—a claim later backed up by a government investigation. Suleyman couldn’t see why we would publish a story that was hostile to his company’s efforts to improve health care. As long as he co…

If you believe in the mission, it's a good thing!

I've never understood the privacy boner. Sure, people can abuse information - can exploit or punish based on it.

But there are also so many positive uses of information. Research, understanding, a fuller picture of the world, helping people.

The need for privacy feels antisocial and backwards to me. We're not living in a totaliarian state where ppl get killed for tweeting the wrong thing, so let's not act like it. Part of maturing is accepting others for the good + bad, and you can't do that with a wall up.

Re: DeepMind cofounder: Generative AI is just a phase. What’s next is interactive AI

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a real argument on the other side, though. We're dealing with technologies that they've when given access to loads of data. Health data is heavily regulated, and rightly so, but that regulation greatly hinders innovation. Hell medical data access problems are bad enough even when we aren't talking about innovation: simple problems in sharing data between different systems/providers leads to bad outcomes all…

I mean, do people no longer have any concept of ethics? And I don't mean this in the abstract sense, I mean literal practical everyday ethics. Understanding the concept of tradeoffs and consequences of actions and the rest. I feel like we've built a church (or possibly cult) that had mantras of "Innovation at all cost. Liquidity at all costs...." among a few others. With no view whatsoever as to what the implications…

I didn't say that we should give up medical privacy at all. Simply that there is, in fact, a trade off, and that the current regime looks to me both overly restrictive and poorly implemented.

Wholly getting rid of medical privacy is obviously a bad idea. But perhaps we could agree that there are research purposes where greater access to data would be helpful, and that creating exemptions under certain circumstances could help on the research side. (Eg, the data is securely silo'ed and access restricted, and stays inside the research org only.)

(It's mind boggling to me that people have such poor ability to think in anything but stark binaries. It's a total failure of critical thought which degrades the quality of policy discussion. How do we even approach it?)

Re: DeepMind cofounder: Generative AI is just a phase. What’s next is interactive AI

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"regulations slow innovation" is not a valid reason to ignore any regulation one finds annoying. Eh. We'd still be stuck with taxis, Prohibition, and 55 MPH speed limits if we followed this dictum. Not to mention paying taxes to the King of England.

Paying taxes to the King of England = companies should have unrestricted access to medical data of millions of people?

Suitably anonymized, I'd say "Yes." You can't make progress in any field without data. Usually, the more data the better, as long as it's good data. If archaic, misguided laws have to be broken to save lives, well... so be it.

The real trick is keeping personally-identifiable data out of the hands of insurance companies.

Re: DeepMind cofounder: Generative AI is just a phase. What’s next is interactive AI

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"regulations slow innovation" is not a valid reason to ignore any regulation one finds annoying. Eh. We'd still be stuck with taxis, Prohibition, and 55 MPH speed limits if we followed this dictum. Not to mention paying taxes to the King of England.

Paying taxes to the King of England = companies should have unrestricted access to medical data of millions of people?

[deleted]

Re: DeepMind cofounder: Generative AI is just a phase. What’s next is interactive AI

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"regulations slow innovation" is not a valid reason to ignore any regulation one finds annoying. Eh. We'd still be stuck with taxis, Prohibition, and 55 MPH speed limits if we followed this dictum. Not to mention paying taxes to the King of England.

Paying taxes to the King of England = companies should have unrestricted access to medical data of millions of people?

I struggle with why this access is an issue. If the health data were used in making insurance decisions, marketing, employment, or any sort of way that has a personal impact on the people in the data set then absolutely not. But presumably personally identifying information is in no way relevant to the task of training models, so what specifically is the concern? Medical data is a constellation of observations over time. Why is this particularly sensitive, especially if it’s not associated with any specific identifiable person?

HIPPA has seemed to create a view that anything related to medical care is the most secret information in all the world, when in fact it’s pretty useless to anyone but yourself and people that want your money in some way that exploits your health situation. HIPPA itself only really erects barriers between your health data and disclosure to insurers and providers without your consent.

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