26 March 2024

How understanding AI today will help you make an impact tomorrow

In this EY podcast episode of Decoding Innovation, Henry Ajder, a globally recognized artificial intelligence and synthetic media advisor, maps out the vast, emerging landscape of AI and its opportunities, threats and benefactors.

While the concept of AI has been a subject of speculation for years — even decades — its significance, at least for the layperson, has elevated in the past couple of years. With the emergence and growing popularity of platforms, such as ChatGPT, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, companies are eager to position themselves at the forefront of the AI renaissance.

As the relevance of AI increases, concerns and doubts associated with it grow as well. While it's undeniable that AI is capable of advancing industrial operations and human lives, it has also raised questions regarding the potential consequences of entrusting machines with power. This has given rise to debates surrounding privacy, consent validity, ethical considerations and potential for its misuse.

Henry Ajder, a globally renowned figure in the world of AI, generative AI (GenAI) and synthetic media, explores the advent of AI and the prospect of artificial superintelligence (ASI) and discusses the commercial implications. Further, he delves deeper into the ethical questions the technology brings forth.

Key takeaways:

Debates persist whether AI can be classified as true intelligence, considering it parrots to the users what they want to hear, based on the massive amount of data is has been trained on.

  • A large number of AI tools are readily accessible free of cost — some companies leverage this to build their reputation and user base. As there's a growing concern regarding how AI is monetized, several platforms have started embracing subscription-based models.

  • With tools capable of voice cloning and generating deepfakes, there's a growing need to create new legislation to curb the harm vectors posed by AI.

    The Decoding Innovation podcast series is a limited production of the EY-Nottingham Spirk Innovation Hub, based in Cleveland, Ohio. For more information, visit our website at https://ey.com/decodinginnovation. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe, leave a review wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to spread the word!

    00:00:25 - Introduction and about the guest
    00:01:25 - Defining AI, AGI and ASI
    00:04:13 - AI: are we there yet?
    00:06:32 - How text-based AI models work
    00:11:15 - Text-based AI vs. audio-visual AI
    00:15:51 - Commercialization of AI
    00:21:55 - Open source vs. premium release models
    00:28:05 - The impact of synthetic media
    00:34:15 - Authentic vs. synthetic
    00:37:16 - Philosophy and AI
    00:40:41 - AI: copyrights and intellectual property
    00:47:18 - AI and cybersecurity
    00:51:09 - Deepfakes and voice cloning
    00:54:25 - AI: the importance of legislation
    01:00:37 - AI democratization: who should be in control?
    01:04:08 - Conclusion

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    Document ID: 2024-5028