Babbage: Fei-Fei Li on how to really think about the future of AI
Economist Podcasts
The Economist
4.3 • 5K Ratings
🗓️ 22 November 2023
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A year ago, the public launch of ChatGPT took the world by storm and it was followed by many more generative artificial intelligence tools, all with remarkable, human-like abilities. Fears over the existential risks posed by AI have dominated the global conversation around the technology ever since.
Fei-Fei Li, a pioneer that helped lay the groundwork that underpins modern generative AI models, takes a more nuanced approach. She’s pushing for a human-centred way of dealing with AI—treating it as a tool to help enhance—and not replace—humanity, while focussing on the pressing challenges of disinformation, bias and job disruption.
Fei-Fei Li is the founding co-director of Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence. Fei-Fei and her research group created ImageNet, a huge database of images that enabled computers scientists to build algorithms that were able to see and recognise objects in the real world. That endeavour also introduced the world to deep learning, a type of machine learning that is fundamental part of how large-language and image-creation models work.
Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, this episode of Babbage is available to listen to for free, but if you want to listen every week, you'll need to be an economist subscriber. |
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| 0:24.5 | award-winning podcasts. For full details, search online for Economist Podcast Plus. |
| 0:33.8 | In a world of seismic change, will your business shape the future or be shaped by it? |
| 0:40.1 | How will we capture the imagination of tomorrow's consumers? |
| 0:45.3 | Overcome operational constraints to focus on future growth. |
| 0:49.9 | And unlock economic and social prosperity through environmental responsibility. |
| 0:55.5 | With EY's full spectrum of services across sectors, |
| 0:58.5 | we're all in to shape the future with confidence. |
| 1:01.8 | Start your transformation journey at EY.com slash transformation. The Economist. |
| 1:18.9 | Chat GPT. Maybe you've heard of it. |
| 1:22.0 | If you haven't, then get ready. |
| 1:24.1 | Sometimes it can feel like artificial intelligence just appeared out of the blue a year ago. |
| 1:29.7 | Because this promises to be the viral sensation that could completely reset how we do things. |
| 1:35.8 | For most people, chat GPT was a shock. This algorithm could produce sentences almost like a human. |
| 1:42.8 | It was uncanny and perhaps a bit scary. |
| 1:47.3 | Our guest today, though, well, she saw it all coming. |
| 1:50.8 | In fact, Faye-Fei Lee laid the critical groundwork |
| 1:54.2 | for the technology that underpins large language models |
| 1:57.4 | and image creation models, |
| 1:59.2 | and which has accelerated progress in AI in the past |
... |
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