In a brand new episode of A Different Lens, a collection of some of the foremost experts on artificial intelligence (AI) share their perspectives on ‘Staying Ahead of the AI Revolution’.
As AI becomes an ongoing aspect of everyday life, as a society it’s time we had the conversation: What parts of AI do we embrace and integrate into our lives, and what parts do we modify or resist entirely?
Ahead of the episode’s public release, the following experts are available to comment on the issues, the opportunities and a future dominated by AI.
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Professor Alan Petersen
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Associate Professor Rashina Hoda
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Associate Professor Campbell Wilson
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Professor Geoff Webb
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Neerav Srivastava (PhD candidate)
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Dr Ridoan Karim
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Associate Professor Michelle Lazarus
The episode will be publicly released on Monday 28 August.
Professor Alan Petersen, Professor of Sociology, Faculty of Arts
Contact details: +61 0420 772 356 or media@monash.edu
Read more of Professor Petersen at Monash Lens
“ChatGPT feels like the introduction of the PC – a tool that allows us to work smarter and enhances the ability of humans to do what they do best, which is create, dream and innovate.
“However, thus far, little has been said about the potential use and misuse of these tools in medicine and healthcare, including for diagnoses, including self-diagnoses, and prescriptions.
“If history is any guide, these are the areas in which these technologies are likely to find early widespread application. They are also areas where there’s much potential for exploitation and misuse, especially given the ready accessibility of the tools online.”
Associate Professor Rashina Hoda, Department of Software Systems and Cybersecurity, and Deputy Director of the HumaniSE Lab, Faculty of Information Technology
Contact details: +61 9903 4840 or media@monash.edu
Read more of Associate Professor Hoda at Monash Lens
“Taking a good long look at how these technologies are actually developed can help to demystify AI.”
“We are looking at the human aspects of the development of AI technologies. By understanding how developers perceive AI we can start to influence the way in which AI systems can be developed with an ethics lens.”
“Training on ethics can easily turn into a boring lecture of do’s and don'ts. We are designing engaging scenario-based quizzes that present ethical dilemmas to help AI/software developers and students become more aware of ethics in their everyday software engineering practice.
Associate Professor Campbell Wilson, Department of Data Science & AI, Faculty of Information Technology
Contact details: +61 450 501 248 or media@monash.edu
Read more of Associate Professor Wilson at Monash Lens
“We need to realistically start thinking about how much we can trust chatbots or generative AI systems. We don’t necessarily need to ban its use but we should be calling for more transparency.
“We need to ask what datasets are used to train such AI systems and is the data sourced ethically? Is it diverse enough? Is it held securely? We need to get to the root of how these technologies are developed and how they are deployed so that we come closer to responsibly produced and used AI.”
Professor Geoff Webb, Department of Data Science & AI, Faculty of Information Technology
Contact details: +61 450 501 248 or media@monash.edu
Read more of Professor Webb at Monash Lens
“Generative AI systems are very good at imitating humans which has led to alarming predictions of existential threats to humanity along with calls to ban the technology.
“We must accept that these technologies are here to stay. The best that a ban would achieve is to stop the good actors from understanding the technologies and give an edge to the bad actors.
“The most productive thing we can do is to acknowledge that we have this new technology now and to see how we can best set it up so that it can be used for the greatest amount of good.”
Neerav Srivastava, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Law
Contact details: +61 9903 4840 or media@monash.edu
Read more of Neerav at Monash Lens
“Chatbots are purposefully building relationships with users and are almost entirely unregulated. That comes with risks. On the other hand there are opportunities such as democratising the law and making it more accessible.”
Dr Ridoan Karim, Lecturer, School of Business, Monash University Malaysia
Contact details: +61 9903 4840 or media@monash.edu
Read more of Dr Karim at Monash Lens
“If we do not do something in the present to regulate AI, then we will have a very struggling future.
“We will see a generation which will have lesser friends, lesser family ties, lesser bonding with society because they have a friend within their own computers.
“Whoever is holding on this generative AI, or AI chatbots, or even AI robots in the future will have potentially a power over politics, over business, and over social decision making processes.
"Regulating generative AI presents a complex challenge, as it involves balancing fostering innovation and addressing potential risks and ethical concerns. We need to understand how AI integrates into society within education, business, politics, and many different tasks within our world. Then we need to regulate it accordingly."
Associate Professor Michelle Lazarus, Director of the Centre for Human Anatomy Education, and Curriculum Integration Network lead for the Monash Centre for Scholarship in Health Education
Contact details: +61 9903 4840 or media@monash.edu
Read more of Associate Professor Lazarus at Monash Lens
Associate Professor Lazarus explores the human capacity for managing uncertainty, and how this influences (and is influenced by) different factors such as artificial intelligence.
“When people first found out about generative AI and Chat GPT we saw the extremes. ‘I love it’. Oh my God, ban it’.
“How did we get to this point where we are afraid of something that we created?
“I don’t think generative AI is replacing our human intelligence or reducing our human intelligence, it’s actually causing us to pause and reflect on reconnecting with our existing intelligence and valuing it, valuing our creativity, valuing our emotions.
“The challenge is how we get humans to not turn over our intelligence.”
Jesselyn Sin, student in Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences
Contact details: +61 9903 4840 or media@monash.edu
“I’m involved in a project that is aiming to discover how healthcare professionals can be involved in the development of generative artificial intelligence and how it can help physicians make better clinical decisions, make better judgements, and ultimately improve patient health outcomes.
“At the end of the day, artificial intelligence is there to complement our expertise and our knowledge, and we should learn to use it appropriately, responsibly and also ethically.”
For more Monash media stories visit our news & events site. For any other topics on which you may be seeking expert comment, contact the Monash University Media Unit on +61 3 9903 4840 or media@monash.edu