We Need Empathy And Trust In The World Of AI

SUN VALLEY, ID – JULY 11: Reid Hoffman, former executive chairman of LinkedIn, arrives for the first day of the annual Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference, July 11, 2017 in Sun Valley, Idaho. Every July, some of the world’s most wealthy and powerful businesspeople from the media, finance, technology and political spheres converge at the Sun Valley Resort for the exclusive weeklong conference. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

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What are the most important aspects of moving forward with these powerful new technologies that we now have at our disposal?

You’ll get different answers if you ask different people. You’ll actually get a lot of people suggesting that we should cut off the flow of these tools and applications, and dramatically restrict the role of AI in our lives.

However, in some other quarters of the community, where people are perhaps more optimistic about the technology, you hear ways that we might be able to move forward by promoting certain kinds of designs.

Trust in AI: Surveys and Trends

Some reports give us good insights into what people’s attitudes are today about AI.

For example, this KPMG study, done recently, goes over attitudes and trust in artificial intelligence. It measures these things in an audience and reports on how that sort of impact works.

To promote the trust that we need, the report identifies three main goals: build stakeholder trust, with “a comprehensive AI governance program to manage risks and complexities in a responsible, ethical, and transparent way,” increase workforce adoption with good tools, and keep human oversight in place.

Studies like these are important and helpful, but there’s also the input of seasoned experts who have done the work in AI entrepreneurship.

Building the Future

At a recent Imagination in Action event this month at Stanford, there was a segment titled “When Imagination Shapes Intelligence” featuring serial entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, and Bing Gordon of Kleiner Perkins.

Initially, an AI avatar of Reid showed up, changing into a Stanford sweatshirt with zero effort and weighing in on its knowledge of Reid’s ideas. Eventually, the audience got the real Reid, via videoconference, and Bing asked Reid a series of questions related to outcomes with artificial intelligence and how we build a better future.

Fostering Empathy and Trusting Our World

Reid, who describes himself as a “reasoned optimist,” has a nuanced outlook on the subject, having founded Inflection, a project aimed at an “empathy-based AI.” He described to Bing his thinking on driving this kind of positivity as we evolve AI in our lives.

“You don’t get the future you want by just avoiding the futures you don’t want,” he said. “You want to create things.

Approaching Investment

Bing asked Reid about some of his investment moves in the past, including AirBnB, which some saw as risky at the beginning. He mentioned early investment, characterizing Mark Zuckerberg, in those first years, as “someone in a hoodie,” and delved into Reid’s thinking.

Again, Reid suggested, there’s a trust and confidence that is necessary.

“Life is a team sport,” he explained. “It requires trust, so we want to be building trust, trust between each other, trust with technology. And obviously the trust has to be reasonable, because obviously, (parties) can mislead and deceive. But that trust is part of how we make society. It’s trust in laws. It’s trust in the society we live in. It’s trust in the monetary system. It’s trust in the financial system. Trust is fundamental, and building trust is an important part of how we maintain our progress.”

Accuracy in Analysis

At one point, Bing talked about how hallucinations in LLMs, by some measurements, are down by something like 95%, and Reid promoted the idea of maintaining factual outcomes with transparency.

Reid had an interesting proposition.

“I actually think it’s good to have dialogue and criticism,” he said. “People say, ‘Oh … don’t criticize.’ No, of course, criticize with the goal of improvement, with a goal of: here are the kinds of things we could do in order to make this better, in terms of how we operate.”

Later, the pair talked about amplifying empathy in AI systems.

Building a culture of humanism, Bing suggested, is something that you do by adding “one cool person at a time.”

“Part of how you trust is that you feel like the other person, the other entity, is listening to you, is responding, and we want to model kindness,” Reid said.

A New Era

Bing turned to the topic of a speech that Reid had made in the Italian city of Bologna, calling for a renaissance in AI.

Responding to what came out of that, Reid referenced a “turmoil in the creative industry” and addressed concerns around job displacement.

“The humanism of the Renaissance, and the art of the Renaissance, (are some) of the things I think we could continue to draw on for inspiration, and the kind of creation that we’re doing within Silicon Valley,” he said.

International Competition Through the Ages

Later in the talk, Bing asked Reid a couple of interesting questions – what would have happened if the English Luddites would have won? Would the British, in the ensuing years, be speaking German? And by that logic, if American Luddites win, will we be speaking Mandarin?

Reid responded with some thoughts about the real momentum of technology movements and other societal work.

“The transitions are difficult,” he said, “but the reason we do it is for future generations, and kind of the progress of society, what happens with our children, our grandchildren, etc, and that’s part of what makes the work meaningful, (and ensures) that the challenges that we navigate go well.”

AI and Helping

One of the most astute parts of Reid’s input, I thought, was when he talked directly about the chance to shape the future in a positive way. He talked about AI helping people in moments of distress, when a human isn’t available.

“An AI agent can be there at 11pm on our Friday night when someone may be feeling particularly disconsolate,” he said. “And obviously we don’t want to be a pure therapeutic replacement, but as a potential salve to deep anxiety or loneliness at the moment, it actually could be very good.”

That’s a lot of what these two went over, in a very thoughtful conversation about our technology and our times.

All of this demonstrates some of the sketched-out road map of where we want to go with AI if we’re going to be successful in integrating it positively into our lives.