Demystifying artificial intelligence

This article was published on the website of the European Science-Media Hub on 9 November 2022

‘AI is about algorithms’, said a computer scientist. ‘AI is about machines that can learn from data’, said an engineer. ‘We need to do something with AI’, said a business manager. ‘AI is an existential threat for humanity’, said a sociology student.

Over the past decade, artificial intelligence has become branded as AI, but does everyone mean the same when they speak about AI? Not really. “A babylonian confusion of tongues has arisen”, says Geertrui Mieke De Ketelaere, Adjunct Professor at Vlerick Business School in Ghent, Belgium.

Geertrui Mieke De Ketelaere: I started working in the field of artificial intelligence when it was just an academic discipline, in the early 1990’s. A decade or so later, businesses started to be interested in AI, and they started to use their own language, stating things like ‘data is the new oil’. Later, some ten years ago or so, governments stepped in and started using their own language around rules, laws and ethics. And now, scientists, technologists, business managers, sociologists and lawyers are sitting around the table, talking about AI, and they don’t understand each other any longer.

So, what should be done?

Geertrui Mieke De Ketelaere: We urgently need ‘AI translators’, people who translate the needs and demands of engineers to managers, or the concerns of citizens to developers. We need people who can talk about all aspects of AI, people who can connect people, planet and profit – the social, environmental and economical domains. We should adopt AI when it has clear added value, but not when it doesn’t.

Read the full article here.

Artificial intelligence starts to hit the right note

In the field of music, artificial intelligence is used both to analyse and to create music. For almost any musical piece AI-tools can already extract information about melody, harmony, rhythm, emotion and style. AI-systems are also starting to improvise on stage together with top musicians.

                                           

Classical composer Igor Stravinsky once said: “I haven’t understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it”. A perfect expression of how deeply human, how deeply emotional music is. What should a computer, however clever, then be doing in the field of art that most directly reaches into the human soul? The answer is: surprisingly much.

Roughly speaking, artificial intelligence can contribute to analysing music and to creating music. Thanks to machine learning, a subdiscipline of AI, both fields have made great progress over the last decade.

For this article I interviewed Emilia Gomez and Gérard Assayag.

The full article can be read here.

The future of AI for healthcare

Artificial intelligence (AI) plays an increasing role in healthcare. It can automate repetitive tasks and help doctors to better diagnose certain cancers. Will AI soon be able to do diagnostics and predictions for disease and treatment which go beyond human’s capacities?

This article was published on the website of the European Science Media hub in November 2021

For the article I interviewed Regina Barzilay and Hugo Aerts.

The full story can be read here.

AI in journalism : with power come responsibilities

Media organisations worldwide show a growing awareness and adoption of artificial intelligence for information gathering, storytelling and news distribution. Given the potential transformative power of AI in journalism, media organisations must consider how best to use AI tools to fulfill their mission. They should reflect on the impacts that AI in journalism has on democracy, diversity and public values.

This article was published on September 9, 2020 by the European Science Media Hub (ESMH)

In its December 2019 issue, The Economist published an interview with a piece of artificial intelligence (AI), called GPT-2. GPT-2 was trained to generate text and in the interview it answered questions about the state of the world in 2020. On the question ‘What is the future of AI?’ the bot replied: “It would be good if we used the technology more responsibly. In other words, we should treat it like a utility, like a tool. We should put as much effort into developing the technology as necessary, rather than worrying that it’s going to harm us and destroy our lives.”

GPT-2 does not really understand what it says, and although its answers in the interview are a bit vague and general, its performance is still pretty impressive. Earlier this year, OpenAI, the developer of GPT-2 already introduced its successor GPT-3, which is a lot more powerful. Automatic text generation is one of many examples that show the potential power of AI used by the media.

In June 2019 the European Science-Media Hub (ESMH) already published an article on AI in journalism, following a three-day summer school for young journalists and students in Strasbourg on that topic. What have been the most important developments and discussions since then?

Read the whole article on the website of the ESMH.

Digital education in times of lockdown – A massive real-life experiment

Worldwide lockdowns forced education to move online all of a sudden. Despite the great potential of digital education, the everyday practice proved to be unruly. While existing inequalities continued to grow, on the positive side students, teachers and parents became more confident in using digital tools.

This article is written for the European Science-Media Hub and was published on July 6, 2020.

Read the whole article here.

Digital entertainment in lockdown: the new life of culture online

During the months-long European lockdown, entertainment moved online like never before. Creativity flourished on social media platforms and, despite being locked up in their homes, people were longing for entertainment that connected them with friends and family. Meanwhile with all museums closed, European cultural heritage was given a new life online.

This article is written for the European Science-Media Hub and was published on June 22, 2020

Read the whole article here.