Lifeboat Foundation

By allowing creators to explore more directions more quickly, generative AI will help them rather than displace them.

People around the globe are so dependent on the internet to exercise socioeconomic human rights such as education, health care, work, and housing that online access must now be considered a basic human right, a new study reveals.

Particularly in developing countries, internet access can make the difference between people receiving an education, staying healthy, finding a home, and securing employment—or not.

Even if people have offline opportunities, such as accessing social security schemes or finding housing, they are at a comparative disadvantage to those with Internet access.

The last few weeks have been abuzz with news and fears (well, largely fears) about the impact chatGPT and other generative technologies might have on the workplace. Goldman Sachs predicted 300 million jobs would be lost, while the likes of Steve Wozniak and Elon Musk asked for AI development to be paused (although pointedly not the development of autonomous driving).

Indeed, OpenAI chief Sam Altman recently declared that he was “a little bit scared”, with the sentiment shared by OpenAI’s chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, who recently said that “at some point it will be quite easy, if one wanted, to cause a great deal of harm”.

As fears mount about the jobs supposedly at risk from generative AI technologies like chatGPT, are these fears likely to prevent people from taking steps to adapt?

Continue reading “Doomsday Predictions Around ChatGPT Are Counter-Productive” »

A new career is emerging with the spread of generative AI applications like ChatGPT: prompt engineering, the art (not science) of crafting effective instructions for AI models.

“In ten years, half of the world’s jobs will be in prompt engineering,” declared Robin Li, cofounder and CEO of Chinese AI giant, Baidu. “And those who cannot write prompts will be obsolete.”

That may be a bit of big tech hyperbole, but there’s no doubt that prompt engineers will become the wizards of the AI world, coaxing and guiding AI models into generating content that is not only relevant but also coherent and consistent with the desired output.

AI-related jobs are on the rise but funding has taken a dip.

The technology world goes through waves of terminologies. Last year, was much about building the metaverse until it turned to artificial intelligence (AI) which has occupied the top news spots almost everywhere. To know whether this wave will last or wither off, one needs to look at some trusted sources in the domain, such as the one released by Stanford University.

For years now, the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence at Stanford has been releasing its AI Index on an annual basis.

Continue reading “New Stanford report highlights the potential, costs, and risks of AI” »

Is artificial intelligence on the path to replacing people and jobs? Not quite. GSB professors argue that instead of viewing #AI as a competitor, we should be embracing it as a collaborator.

“The idea that AI is aimed toward automation is a misconception. There’s so much more opportunity for this technology to augment humans than the very narrow notion of replacing humans.” Professor Fei-Fei Li, co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.
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The non-profit said powerful AI systems should only be developed “once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.” It cited potential risks to humanity and society, including the spread of misinformation and widespread automation of jobs.

The letter urged AI companies to create and implement a set of shared safety protocols for AI development, which would be overseen by independent experts.

Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque, researchers at Alphabet’s AI lab DeepMind, and notable AI professors have also signed the letter. At the time of publication, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had not added his signature.

The latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence could lead to the automation of a quarter of the work done in the US and eurozone, according to research by Goldman Sachs.

The investment bank said on Monday that “generative” AI systems such as ChatGPT, which can create content that is indistinguishable from human output, could spark a productivity boom that would eventually raise annual global gross domestic product by 7 percent over a 10-year period.

But if the technology lived up to its promise, it would also bring “significant disruption” to the labor market, exposing the equivalent of 300 million full-time workers across big economies to automation, according to Joseph Briggs and Devesh Kodnani, the paper’s authors. Lawyers and administrative staff would be among those at greatest risk of becoming redundant.

A new study finds that AI tools could more quickly handle at least half of the tasks that auditors, interpreters and writers do now.