{"id":38232,"date":"2023-12-24T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-24T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/a2c85ca3-0e6e-4e7b-b524-7482e68edbb7"},"modified":"2023-12-24T11:46:13","modified_gmt":"2023-12-24T10:46:13","slug":"would-you-swear-at-chatgpt-if-it-had-a-head-ri-christmas-lectures-preview","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/rss_feed\/would-you-swear-at-chatgpt-if-it-had-a-head-ri-christmas-lectures-preview\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Would you swear at ChatGPT if it had a head?\u2019: RI Christmas lectures preview"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prof Mike Wooldridge gives us an early peek at the demonstrations his Christmas Lectures will include – plus an insight into how he thinks AI is going to change the world for children. <\/p>

By Noa Leach\n <\/p>

Published: Sunday, 24 December 2023 at 09:00 AM<\/p>

\n\n

In The Royal Institution\u2019s almost 200-year history of Christmas Lectures, the topics covered have swept through chemistry, mechanical engineering and astronomy to psychology, climate change<\/a> and, this year, artificial intelligence (AI)<\/a>.<\/p>

Many people are concerned about how AI is going to change our healthcare, careers and entertainment, but what do the experts think? Mike Wooldrige<\/a> is a professor of computer science at the University of Oxford and has been selected to deliver this year\u2019s Royal Institute Christmas Lecture on AI.<\/p>

What was your reaction to being selected to give this year\u2019s Royal Institution\u2019s Christmas Lecture?<\/h2>

I was stunned. Flabbergasted! I thought: have they contacted the wrong person?<\/p>

The Christmas Lectures were one of the treats over the Christmas period for me \u2013 I was really into science as a young kid and I can remember watching them in the 1970s.<\/p>

I remember watching Carl Sagan, who was an astrophysicist, talking about the planets<\/a> and being absolutely entranced by his lectures. More recently we had Sir David Attenborough<\/a>. David Attenborough!<\/p>

Following in their footsteps is really quite something. For so many British scientists, the Christmas Lectures were one of the things that kindled their interest in science. To be part of that legacy is amazing.<\/p>

The Christmas Lectures are famous for their iconic props<\/a>. What can we expect to see in your talk?<\/h2>

The first thing the RI team told me is that it\u2019s a tradition to have an explosion and a dog (ideally at different times). So there will be an explosion and there will be a dog, but I\u2019m not saying any more than that.<\/p>

What I will say is you\u2019re going to see lots of demos of how AI works in computer games. A lot of children spend their leisure time gaming and they may not realise that there\u2019s a lot of AI behind the scenes in computer games.<\/p>

So we\u2019re hoping to get some kids out of the audience to play with some of the most sophisticated AI game technology in the world. Lucky kids!<\/p>

We\u2019re also going to do a live Turing Test. Until the last couple of years, we didn\u2019t have computer programs that could realistically pass the Turing Test [and be able to converse in a manner that\u2019s indistinguishable from a human]. Then all of a sudden, we have programs that could plausibly pass it.<\/p>

As an AI researcher who\u2019s been working in this field for so long, to suddenly have that opportunity is enormously exciting. So we\u2019re going to see what happens \u2013 I don\u2019t know how it\u2019s going to come out.<\/p>

The aim is to demystify all of this. So we\u2019ll also play some games that explain how ChatGPT<\/a> works. We\u2019ll show people what\u2019s going on \u2018under the hoods\u2019 of these AI programs. I hope to really show that there\u2019s nothing to be afraid of with AI.<\/p>

How do you think today\u2019s children are forming relationships with AI?<\/h2>

There\u2019s an expression for what are called \u2018digital immigrants\u2019 and \u2018digital natives\u2019. The World Wide Web didn’t happen until I was nearly 30 years old, so I didn’t grow up with the Internet. I’m a digital immigrant \u2013 I moved into this area later in life.<\/p>

My kids have not just grown up with the Internet, but they’ve grown up accustomed to absolutely ubiquitous Internet access. So they are digital natives. This is the generation that we’re going to be talking to in the Christmas Lectures.<\/p>

It’s the first generation that’s going to grow up with tools like ChatGPT around them all the time. All I can hope to do is prepare them for that so that when they encounter that, they go in with their eyes open: that I get them excited about the possibilities as well as aware of what the risks are.<\/p>

Prof Mike Wooldridge investigates howlogic, computational complexity and game theory interacts in computational system – Photo credit: Paul Wilkinson Photography, Alamy<\/figcaption><\/figure>

Some parents and teachers worry about children becoming endlessly diverted by AI entertainment, or over-relying on it for their homework. What would you say to them?<\/h2>

Fears about technology being a threat to civilisation are nothing new. I remember in the 1970s, when pocket calculators became widely available, people had exactly the same fears: they worried that kids wouldn\u2019t learn how to do arithmetic and that they would do all their homework on the calculator.<\/p>

But mathematics didn\u2019t collapse. What pocket calculators did for us is they just relieved us of a very tedious burden. Pocket calculators enable many people to do the arithmetic that they don\u2019t particularly enjoy doing, and do it more quickly and more reliably.<\/p>

My guess is that, in the long run, that’s exactly what will happen with AI technology. It\u2019ll just be another tool, similar to pocket calculators.<\/p>

Thinking along those lines, I hear lots of teachers are hoping that AI might soon be able to do their marking for them. Do you see that happening? How else could AI be used in the classroom?<\/h2>

I\u2019d be nervous about using it for marking right now, because AI gets things wrong a lot. I think it could [perform that task] ultimately, but human judgment is very important for marking.<\/p>

But I think AI will have its place in the classroom. One of the unexpected benefits of tools like ChatGPT is that they\u2019re really good for brainstorming. It can prime a teacher on different subjects and give them ideas about how to present things in new and interesting ways.<\/p>

The dream of AI in education is that what we end up with is AI tutors. That is, that you end up with something like ChatGPT that takes the role of a teacher.<\/p>

I think teachers are safe in their jobs for the foreseeable future though. We\u2019ve seen endless new technology in teaching, but, fundamentally, teaching is very similar now to what it was 200 years ago.<\/p>

Some studies are investigating what happens to a child\u2019s psychology if they\u2019re consistently rude to an AI in a way that they wouldn\u2019t be with a human. Should we encourage children to respect AI and see them as friends?<\/h2>

On the one hand, I think this technology is just a tool. Swearing at an Excel spreadsheet (which I do most days) is not intrinsically wrong \u2013 and neither is swearing at ChatGPT.<\/p>

Where it becomes difficult is if the AI is presented with a human persona. Abusing an Excel spreadsheet doesn\u2019t feel wrong, but how would you feel about abusing a humanoid robot<\/a> with something like a human head and eyes?<\/p>

I think most of us would feel, at the very least, uncomfortable about that \u2013 because it somehow takes it a lot closer to abusing human beings. So I think one of the important principles about AI is that it should never be presented as if it\u2019s a human being \u2013 that it should always be presented as a tool.<\/p>

I think the truth is we just don\u2019t know yet. But I definitely think this is something that we need to keep an eye on.<\/p>

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