STEM-Talk: Ken Ford separates what’s real in AI from hype and science fiction

For the past year, artificial intelligence has dominated the headlines. Perhaps because there has been so much media and public interest, and so much anxiety and speculation about AI, STEM-Talk’s mailbox has been flooded with questions and concerns.

In episode 198 of STEM-Talk, which is now available on your favorite podcast app, Dr. Dawn Kernagis puts a wide range of listener questions to Dr. Ken Ford in an Ask Me Anything episode focused exclusively on artificial intelligence.

Ford has been working in AI since the 1980s. The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence elected Ford a fellow in 2000 for his “leadership in exploring and explaining foundational issues and in establishing large-scale AI research programs and institutions.” In today’s episode, he helps listeners sort genuine advances from exaggerated claims.

A few listener questions Ford addresses in this AMA include:

• Is the panic over the enormous power demands of AI data centers overblown?
• Could putting data centers in orbit and powering them with solar energy help address AI’s growing demand for electricity?
• Are current AI models evolving beyond sophisticated prediction engines toward systems that can genuinely understand and reason?
• Is it a good idea to use earlier generations of AI systems to help develop and program their successors?
• Should AI companies be protected under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act?
• Will lawmakers and courts eventually designate AI systems as legal persons, analogous in some respects to the legal personhood afforded corporations?
• What does Ken make of a statement signed by nearly 200 researchers and economists warning that increasingly powerful AI could lead to widespread job displacement or joblessness?

STEM-Talk is an award-winning podcast from the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition that hosts conversations with the leading minds in science and technology. Subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app, and browse our episode library at IHMC.us/stemtalks.