• Andrew Ng | Chief Scientist and AI team lead, Baidu; Co-Founder and Chairman, Coursera
• Neil Jacobstein | Chair, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Singularity University
• interviewed by John Bussey | Associate Editor, The Wall Street Journal
Will AI power a new industrial revolution — and change everything?
ANDREW NG:
“AI will change every industry”
I have 1300 people working on AI at Baidu
General rule of thumb: today, deep learning can do anything a human can do in 1 second. Some jobs can be broken down into 1 second tasks (like the job of a security guard monitoring a bank of screens)
Where are we with NLP? Speech recognition- 95 -> 99% accuracy is all the difference in the world
Baidu has seen 100% YOY growth in voice use across the platform.
You’ll soon forget what it’s like before.
On prior false hopes for AI: “A lot of industries go through winter, winter, winter, and then an eternal spring.”
Today, most economic value comes from Supervised learning (training on Input/ response. For example, Input photo, output cat). Humans are so much more than that. Unsupervised learning and game playing is mostly a research activity today (exciting but not economic value yet).
We have a huge dataset of 200m faces, growing to 800m. Academia only has 15m images, and I don’t know how they will keep up.
Neil:
In 10-15 years, routine jobs and entry-level jobs will be automated. 47% of jobs will be vulnerable in U.S. In developing economies, 60-85% … This is destabilizing… therefore, invest in free education and basic income. Get ahead before it bites us all in the ass.
Ng:
Sure , there will be new jobs like Drone traffic optimizer, 3D printed fashion designer, and things I can’t imagine. We might pay you to study new skill set
Vinod – 80% of jobs destroyed by automation.
In 1900, U.S. was 80% agriculture. No longer. The last transition was from Muscle to brain… this time there is not something for humanity to move on to. This time, there won’t be enough time… Last time, it was a generational shift, where the parent can stay in agriculture until they retire, and the kids had to go off to school to learn A new job. It’s faster displacement now.
What do I worry abiouyt with AI? It’s not Terminator or Skynet. I worry about jobs, jobs, jobs.
For large companies, AI talent is so hard to find
E.g. Your gift card vertical business can’t hire the top AI Talent
I have a hard time thinking of an industry that won’t be transformed… except hairdressing.
What’s your AI strategy? Hire a chief AI officer
On Privacy: “We’ve all learned we need to behave ourselves”
Optimistic: I believe in a “Growth mindset” whereby anyone can learn anything
Pessimistic: many people don’t realize that their jobs are going away. Radiologists don’t know they are in the crosshairs of automation. If you are in med school now, you should not be going into radiology.
Need a genuine shift to lifelong learning
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