«Imagine yourself in 1910 in a bar in North Carolina, three years after the first long-haul flight. Two experts are discussing the Wright Brothers’ invention, the pessimistic one says: We must stop that machine! Soon we will have someone dropping bombs on our heads to blow us up. His optimistic colleague replies: Don’t you realize, one day we will be able to go from San Francisco to Rome in less than half a day, resting, watching a movie and eating great food. Here, the problem is this: they are both right.”
Artificial intelligence is a question mark that does not have a certain answer, and perhaps never will. Ultimately it is the story of humanity’s great doubts which then brought us this far, on the path of progress that is taking flight, a bit like that plane which was still a fantasy in the early twentieth century. Jerry Kaplan read his tomorrow as a child and then created it, making what was only a dream come true, «surprisingly, I would say». Computer scientist, teacher, entrepreneur (with his Go Corporation he created software for tablets to be used with a digital stylus when the iPad was still very far away in Steve Jobs’ mind), as well as an American essayist now 72 years old, he was a guest in Milan at «Intersections», the event organized by Iab Forum and If! Italians Festival on marketing and communication in the age of AI. Precisely because he spent a lifetime wondering what machines could do for us and then translated his experience into a book, Generative AI (Luiss University Press), which is a summary of the history, risks, rules, ethics and philosophy of a world that is no longer the future. Because it is today. His is a story born with Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Cycle and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (“it was my First Contact”), the rest came from continually asking questions.
Asimov himself wrote The Last Question, the story of a series of questions addressed to a machine. Started by a programmer and ended with humanity becoming a computer that turns on the light of Creation.
«In fact, today more than ever, questions are at the center of everything: to guide artificial intelligence in the best possible way, you need to ask the right ones. And that’s why engineers are studying more and more: how to persuade computers to go in the right direction. It will be one of the indispensable professions of the near future.”
Demand is what separates risks from opportunities.
«Generative AI is a powerful technology, something that has never existed in human history. It will be used in many fields of activity and will be able to give us incredible benefits. The problem with asking questions is that we still don’t imagine how many things it will be capable of doing for us, how many killer applications we will have in our smartphones. But it has already happened many times in the past.”
Really?
«In the 1950s Tom Watson was the president of IBM, the largest technology company in the world. When they asked him how many computers would be enough in the world, he answered confidently: 7! It is difficult to imagine the future…”.
Yet today many talk more about the dangers of AI rather than highlighting its possible benefits.
«This is because for 30-40 years the film industry has talked about an artificial intelligence that had the sole purpose of destroying us. I can reassure everyone: Terminator is not coming. If it is true that risks exist, it is equally certain that there will be tools that will change our existence for the better: AI can be used to create bombs but also clean energy, it depends on us.”
A question of ethics, in short.
«The solution is to ask ourselves where man should be in this revolution. There are those who say that we need to put ourselves in the loop, within this change. I disagree: soon we will have machines capable of analyzing ethical problems and giving us the right suggestion. Our job is to make sure these machines work properly.”
Practically each of us will have a personal assistant.
“Exact. Computers will understand our dreams and desires, and will represent us in many forms. It’s a bit like that joke that goes around in Hollywood when two people meet to get to know each other: Pleased to meet you, my assistant will call your assistant.”
However, we live in the world of misinformation created by technology.
«The problem is not artificial intelligence, but people. In my country today the political dialogue is so crazy that AI certainly can’t do worse. There is a part of people who believes what they want to believe, and doesn’t want to know if it’s the truth.”
And what is the truth?
«That AI, it’s true, is very good at creating things that confuse ideas, for example with images. But the level of dialogue is so low that it cannot go even lower, and in this case artificial intelligence can also be used to understand what reliable information is.”
How will it really change our lives for the better?
«In the medical field it will be fundamental. I think that in 5 years we will talk to AI to get an opinion, without this taking anything away from the doctors, on the contrary.”
Any examples?
«In other words: it will be enough to take a photo of a mole with your smartphone to find out whether it is dangerous or not, in order to contact the specialist in a very short time. It will also be very useful for triage, to access care at any time and in any place. And the costs of healthcare and visits will be significantly reduced.”
Would he have believed it if they had told him about it when he was a child?
«I read science fiction thinking that I would never see anything like it in my life. I’m really surprised: I talk about it in the last chapter of my book. And in any case, if only 5 years ago you had asked me if we would have had a computer with artificial intelligence inside, I would have told you no.”
So what will happen now?
«Good question. People still haven’t understood how powerful this technology is, how much it will change the world. It’s still very early to have an answer, and it’s a bit like the internet: at its birth no one could predict how social media would change society. About me: I’m in Tom Watson’s position…”
But, Doctor Kaplan, you have to give an answer: do you believe in computers?
«It almost seems like a mystical question…
I can say yes, in the sense that I believe in their power. The future will be different, humans will not do many things. But the right question is what is right for them to do and how they could create problems for us. Believing in them depends on how we decide to use them.”