The document discusses the current state and future potential of artificial intelligence (AI), highlighting its technologies like natural language processing, machine learning, and robotics, as well as the ethical implications and societal impacts. It features insights from James Hendler, a prominent AI researcher, on the effectiveness and limitations of AI models like ChatGPT and DALL-E. Finally, it emphasizes the need for society to adapt to these technologies by understanding their capabilities and addressing inherent biases.

1. Exploring the Boundaries of Artificial Intelligence: A
Look at the Present and Future of AI
James Hendler
Director, Future of Computing Institute
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
The title abstract and bio were generated by chatGPT – the next few slides compare its outputs an “reality”

2. Exploring the Boundaries of Artificial Intelligence: A
Look at the Present and Future of AI
(OK, but I was going to call it “Modern AI”)
James Hendler
Tetherless World Chair of Computer, Web and Cognitive
Sciences
Director, Future of Computing Institute
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
My main title as
used in other talks
Twitter: @jahendler
I always include this

3. Abstract
• This talk will discuss modern Artificial Intelligence (AI)
and its impact on society. We will explore current AI
technologies and their applications, such as natural
language processing, machine learning, and robotics.
We will discuss the potential ethical implications of AI,
as well as the potential for AI to revolutionize the way
we work and live. Finally, we will speculate on the future
of AI and the potential implications for our society.

4. Bio
• James Hendler is the Tetherless World Professor of Computer, Web, and
Cognitive Sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a Director of
both the Rensselaer AI & Reasoning Lab and the Web Science Research
Center. He is also the Chief Scientist of the Solid Project at MIT. James is
a world-renowned researcher in artificial intelligence and distributed
computing, with a particular focus on the Semantic Web, linked data, and
applications of AI and Web technologies to areas such as healthcare and
national security.
He is a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence,
the Association for Computing Machinery, and the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers.
NOT TRUE
NOT TRUE Thanks, but …
These are true, but leave out some important ones: BCS, AAAS, and US Natl Academy of
Public Administration.
This was renamed,
but it’s a common error

5. • The primary published paper by the OpenAI team: (arXiv)
• Radford, A., Wu, J., Child, R., Luan, D., Amodei, D. and Sutskever, I., 2019.
Language models are unsupervised multitask learners. OpenAI blog, 1(8), p.9.
• Won’t explain anything useful
• Lots of simple videos, that give the basic idea – for example
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQguO9IeQWE
ChatGPT – getting a lot of media “attention”

6. “the stochastic parrot”
“Transformer” models learn sequences of connected words, encode them, and decode them. This basic model was
referred to, pejoratively, as a stochastic parrot. GPT2 (and thus chatGPT) are basically extensions of this model

7. Why “stochastic” parrot
+
Note: origianl talk has a video of a chattering budgerigar
- replaced with a photo to reduce size

8. What can follow what
• “Good”
• Good day, good night, good times, good will, good movie …
• But less so: Good elephant, Good yoyo
• System assigns “probabilities” to each one
• Essentially throws a (many sided die) to decide which one
• Then continue with what can follow the phrase
• Good night moon, Good day maam, Good will is important, Good movie is <name>
• And maybe fix a bit “<name> is a good movie”
• Note, your cell phone has been doing this for you for a long time
• Autocomplete, auto-suggest
• But chatGPT was trained on over 4billion documents
• And had human intervention (underpaid Kenyan women), rating answers, looking for
‘bad things’ (child pornography, etc)…
• And a bunch of rules

9. What it’s good at
• Generating unusual content
Prompt: Write a short poem for a black cat that used to be feral but has now been adopted
I was scared and alone
in an alley all day
But now I'm safe and warm
I'll never have to stray
A kind human took me in
My life has changed for the better
I'm so glad I'm not alone
Living in a loving home forever

10. What it’s (pretty) good at
• Generating seemingly meaningful, connected text that is convincing
• Leicester is a city in the East Midlands of England. It is the county
town of Leicestershire and is located on the River Soar and close to
the eastern end of the National Forest. It is the tenth largest city in
England and the largest in the East Midlands. Leicester has a rich and
varied history and is renowned for its cultural diversity. It is a vibrant
city with a wide range of shopping and leisure activities, a lively
nightlife and a thriving cultural scene. Leicester is also home to two
universities and is the birthplace of the famous playwright, William
Shakespeare.

11. What it’s (pretty) good at
• Generating seemingly meaningful, connected text that is convincing
• Leicester is a city in the East Midlands of England. It is the county town of
Leicestershire and is located on the River Soar and close to the eastern end
of the National Forest. It is the tenth largest city in England and the largest
in the East Midlands. Leicester has a rich and varied history and is
renowned for its cultural diversity. It is a vibrant city with a wide range of
shopping and leisure activities, a lively nightlife and a thriving cultural
scene. Leicester is also home to two universities and is the birthplace of the
famous playwright, William Shakespeare. [error may be caused by
Shakespeare statue in Leicester Square Gardens, London]

12. What it’s not so good at - facts
• ChatGPT: name 5 famous alumni of U. Leicester
• 1. Bill Buford - Author and journalist
• Nope – UC Berkeley and Kings College, Cambridge
• 2. David Attenborough - Television presenter and naturalist
• Nope - Clare College, Cambridge
• 3. William Hague - British Politician
• Nope - Oxford
• 4. Stephen Frears - Film director
• Nope - Trinity College, Cambridge
• 5. Richard Attenborough - Actor, director and producer
• Sort of – didn’t graduate from U Leicester but was Principal of University College, Leicester (1932–1951)
SCORE: 0.5/5

13. What OpenAI says about chatGPT

14. But we are trying to do better than that…
CROWDSOURCING ERRORS
https://researchrabbit.typeform.com/llmerrors

15. • DALL-E started generating art and got a huge amount of attention (still
does, but chatGPT getting more)
• But is (maybe) a lot more interesting cognitively
But let’s get to something more fun: DALL-E
Apoplectic catholic cardinals picking tomatoes
in the noon day sun

16. A vase of flowers

17. a painting of a vase of flowers

18. a painting of a vase of flowers in the style of
Rembrandt

19. A painting of a vase of flowers in the style of
Magritte (then Dali)

20. A painting of a vase of flowers in the style of
Mondrian (you be the judge)
Real
Mondrians

21. How is it doing this
• Diffusion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1X4fHzF4mQ

22. How is it doing this
• Diffusion
Train system to reconstruct image
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1X4fHzF4mQ

23. How is it doing this
• Diffusion
Degrade image till it cannot be recognized
Train the system to reconstruct image
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1X4fHzF4mQ

24. Diffusion is coupled with text generation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1X4fHzF4mQ

25. Humans were used to judge quality
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1X4fHzF4mQ

26. Challenges
• Physical quality attributions/relations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1X4fHzF4mQ
Red cube on top of a blue cube

27. Challenges
• OpenAI admits they must fight bias with examples like gender
stereotyping

28. The future holds challenges
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9ImnP2EIy4
Story book picture AI “nightmare” version

29. Deep fakes … in real time?
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPU0WNUzsBo
• America’s got talent
Imposed singer’s actions/words w/Simon Cowell’s
face and voice (was a finalist in season 2022)

30. So what is the challenge overall?
• When new technologies emerge, a combination of hype and panic often
result
• Kids had to learn to tell TV news from fictional shows
• Calculators banned from schools (now required on tests)
• Wikipedia banned from classroom (now style sheets on how to cite)
• For the new AI technologies, we need to
• Learn what they can and cannot do well
• Reduce the hype and focus on the reality
• Learn to live with it
• Humans plus machines continually outperform each, we need to learn how best to put
them together
• Understanding machine intelligence better
• Understanding HUMAN intelligence better

31. Questions?
Dall-e: The word “questions” in 3-d style