computer-scientists-from-the-united-kingdom

"We are a long way, she says from robots taking over the world...[but she] is championing the installation of ‘black box’ recorders for responsible robotics...[to] provide some accountability and information, in the event that something goes wrong."

"I’m more and more interested in Responsible Innovation…the trouble is, the industry is all about running fast and breaking things, it’s the mind-set. People often don’t think about negative or unintended consequences"

"There are a lot of ethical issues in computing and AI: AI has also become an ever-present feature of computer programs – deciding who is called for interviews, who is granted a loan and who is seen at risk of reoffending when considered for parole."

"We didn’t see my mother much during that time, she remained in Scotland, In my teenage years, I was desperate to get away from Westgate."

"[After taking her degree] I spotted in a newspaper this conversion course, where you learned about computers and artificial intelligence. I enrolled. I was one of only three women on the course...It was the first AI really"

"I was very interested in why people did what they did [and so took a degree in Social Anthropology and Psychology]. I found it really rewarding. It opened my eyes"

"People may not know what they want from a system. But I was interested in watching what people did and working out from that what they needed. It’s very interesting"

"We know of no path that will take us from where we are now, in terms of computing and AI technology, to the singularity."

"The story is that it all spirals out of our control. And of course this is the plot of quite a lot of science fiction movies, notably Terminator. I love those movies just as much as anybody does. But it's deeply implausible, and I became frustrated with that narrative for all sorts of reasons, one of which is that that narrative, whenever it comes up in serious debate about where AI is going and what the risks are, there are real risks associated with AI. It tends to suck all the oxygen out of the room in the phrase that my colleague used. And it tends to dominate the conversation and distract us from things that we should really be talking about."

"Machines can only learn from things that are in digital form,so unless something is in noughts and ones, they can’t learn from it. Think about all the experiences you have learnt from that are not digitised – things that have gone well or not so well that are not accessible to machines. There is so much that machines don’t know. They have harvested a lot of data but there’s a lot of knowledge and life experience that’s within us all – but not on the web."

"‎There is this narrative out there, and it's a very popular narrative and it's very compelling which is that at some point machines are going to become as intelligent as human beings and then they can apply their intelligence to making themselves even smarter."

"Something like ChatGPT is only one possible solution, AI is far broader."

"Not only is the underlying data itself a problem – “It comes from a western view of the world which can be full of poor data and horrific stuff,– but also there is not enough diversity among the people working in that space. We need people in the room to be able to say, ‘I’m not comfortable with that."

"AI is a “fundamentally useful technology”, It harnesses lots of different varieties of maths to solve problems, but as it grows we’ll increasingly need human context and human understanding. The organisations who are going to win will be those who bring those things together in the most effective, inclusive, empathetic way."

"we have some components of intelligence but no idea how to build a system that integrates them"

"We are in a hype cycle, And there’s a bit of Fomo [fear of missing out] around AI. Everyone thinks everyone else is doing it and doing it at scale and getting it right – and that’s not really the case. Everyone is in the same period of uncertainty."

"Despite the introduction of improved safety mechanisms, robots have claimed many more victims since 1981. Over the years people have been crushed, hit on the head, welded and even had molten aluminium poured over them by robots. Last year there were 77 robot-related accidents in Britain alone, according to the Health and Safety Executive…"

"I will be working with the Turing team to build up the Institute's portfolio in AI - not just in my own area, multi-agent systems, but AI more generally. We have a really exciting portfolio of activities in the pipeline, which will confirm the UK's place at the heart of the 21st century AI revolution."

"So what exactly is being done to protect us from these mechanical menaces? ‘Not enough’, says Blay Whitby, an artificial-intelligence expert at the University of Sussex in England. This is hardly surprising given that the field of ‘safety-critical computing’ is barely a decade old, he says."

"“AI is nothing without the data,” she says. “But there’s a lot to think through: where is the data coming from, is it representative, is it sustainable, do you have the rights over that data, could it be biased?"

"Sometimes it’s straightforward, say, if a company ran an AI model and attracted 5% more new business. But often it’s much more difficult to assess – for example, how it also affects productivity within wider systems and potentially impacts society more widely"

"where can we put AI?” theme going on in boardrooms. “But AI is one of several tools, It can provide insight from data, it can find patterns, generate content, enable conversations between chatbot and customer – but we must use it for the right reasons."

"I am delighted to be joining the Turing at such an exciting time", ."

"So where does this leave Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics? They were a narrative device, and were never actually meant to work in the real world, says Dr. Whitby. Quite apart from the fact that the laws require the robot to have some form of human-like intelligence, which robots still lack, the laws themselves don’t actually work very well. Indeed, Asimov repeatedly knocked them down in his robot stories, showing time and again how these seemingly watertight rules could produce unintended consequences."

"Human ingenuity, empathy and people working as a team will really come to the fore. We will always need the human connection. And as AI grows, these soft skills will be increasingly critical"

"So how should businesses approach an AI strategy? “I first ask clients to think about their goals: what is it they want to change in the organisation? Are they looking to attract more customers or maintain the current ones? What insights would be most valuable or what questions do they have? What would you need to know about customers to speak to them in a way that resonates?”"

"Everyone is talking about it, but not everyone who claims to be doing it really is"

"It may be a lot of fancy maths, but it’s easy to forget there’s a whole supply chain involved with AI,For example, where’s the data from, who’s supplying the algorithms, who maintains it, who’s keeping track, and what happens if something degrades over time or customer behaviour changes? Making sure the right people are accountable in the right way is really important."

"I’ve been in this space for a long time, “When I did my degree I was one of two women doing computer science, so I am used to it. But I haven’t seen radical progress. AI is still pretty male dominated."

"There is lots of amazing work being done out there by people such as Maggie Philbin [the former presenter of BBC’s Tomorrow’s World] and Anne-Marie Imafidon [Stemettes founder]. But if you think about who is going to play around with algorithms at the weekend to gain experience, it’s less likely to be a woman with kids or anyone with caring responsibilities. When do women have time to experiment with it?"

"AI’s potential to replace jobs is one of the biggest societal challenges. Just like how the industrial revolution reduced the need for physical labor in factories, AI and automation are making certain jobs obsolete. This raises crucial questions about the future of work and how society will adapt. What will humans do when robots can perform tasks like driving, cleaning, or even teaching? It’s a problem that requires long-term thinking, especially since automation leads to greater wealth concentration in the hands of a few."

"Right now, AI is still just a very advanced tool. It doesn’t have the ability to make its own decisions or have its own goals like humans do. To be human, you need to have agency, a purpose, and a soul. AI hasn’t reached that level yet. Maybe in the far future, it’s possible, but it’s still a long way off—probably around 50 years."

"I’m deeply concerned about the political response to climate change. The failure to address it is one of the most pressing issues facing humanity today. Politicians often avoid making difficult decisions, choosing short-term gains over long-term solutions. I think we need leaders who will make the tough choices, like former President Obama tried to do, but unfortunately, this is a challenge that’s far from being solved."

"I am a self-made entrepreneur. I started off as a small-time writer, now I own publishing and IT companies. I do what the hell I want to do."

"And again, you want to be able to handle those large embedding tables because the larger the embedding table, the more accurate the model, the better recommendation you’re able to give."

"And so what you want is the capability to both do large batch training very efficiently, but also to single-batch inference very efficiently. And so we can do that with the SambaNova systems."

"I think it’s a great idea to develop AI talent outside of traditional hubs like the Bay Area. Personally, I’m from Nigeria, so I see the value in growing research and innovation in regions that might not be the typical focus."

"The idea of AI replacing politicians is far-fetched, but AI can certainly influence how politics work."

"The whole goal is, of course, to provide the capabilities to be able to train very, very large, accurate models. If you look at the current landscape of computing capabilities, mostly dominated by GPUs, what you need is many, many GPUs because of the limited amount of memory that each of the GPUs can have."

"What SambaNova brings to the table is the ability one or two or a quarter rack of capability to be able to provide terabytes of memory. And so that allows you to build huge models that can serve any of the particular industrial verticals or commercial verticals that are of interest."

"So think of SambaNova systems as this capability of doing training and inference very efficiently. And then the real full circle: Once you can do training and inference on the same platform, you can dynamically switch between them."

"For instance, huge natural language processing models for the financial sector or for developing chatbots and customer services, voice-based commerce. Also, natural language processing, finds use in cancer research also."

"Or huge vision models that we call true resolution that allow you to do medical images without reducing the resolution to make the image more blurry, so that you can fit it into the memory requirements of conventional systems."

"Learning methods that solve real-world problems and at the same time have the trust of domain experts and the broader public."

"I am looking forward to forging new collaborations and synergies within the Department and beyond that would allow us to develop the next generation."

"If we say that the data does not necessarily need to be viewed by human scientists, we can come up with completely new experimental data sources."

"What I would like to do is to take a step back and look at the next generation of data sources where the consumer of the data will not be a human but a machine."

"I am honoured and delighted to join Oxford, which has unparalleled expertise in AI and related fields and amazing students."

"It could be that in some applications we don’t necessarily need the kind of scale we find in ChatGPT."

"The range and diversity of problems in biology is significantly bigger than in language."