AI INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR BANAFA

Good to have you on the show, Professor Banefa. So, people are already familiar with artificial intelligence or AI. But what is generative AI and what is it capable of? That's a very good question. AI in general, artificial intelligence, is actually three stages. The first one, which is the narrow AI, really passed that stage, which is the Siri, you know, Alexa, where the human is smarter than the machine. The general AI, where the human and the machine, they have a similar level of intelligence, which is what we are in today. And that is where the generative AI comes into play. The term generative AI is taking data, taking information, processing information, and then creating something completely new, not just summarizing or, you know, just copying what's in the data. Now that for the general AI, which is the second stage. The third stage, which is the super AI, which is still in the future, this is when the machine will be smarter than the human. That's where the danger is, when they start making their own decisions, and sometimes they look at the human as an obstacle. Now, when it comes to AI, people are either frozen by fear or hypnotized by the upside. Should people be fearful about AI? I understand their fears, because the reason for this is that it could take jobs, and a lot of jobs are going to be lost because of that. But at the same time, it's going to open the door for new jobs. And this is the story of any technology. When the Internet came to the picture, a lot of people lost their job, but the Internet opened a new opportunities for people. The fear is when we rely too much on the AI to make decisions that has to impact our life. Do you think the government should step in to regulate this whole AI industry? If so, is right now a good time before things get out of control? We need to regulate the AI. We need to make sure that there is a responsibility from different perspectives. For example, the content itself. Is there any copyright for people to take in that content? Who's responsible for sharing bad information? If somebody, if you ask the chatty bitty about giving you, you know, some kind of information that it is illegal, all of these kind of things that you need some regulation. And I did write a letter to the White House, and I got a reply from the president about that letter, specifically about this point, telling, you know, the White House, we need to have a regulation. We need to do it in conjunction with the companies. At the same time, don't leave it for the private sector to regulate themselves, because they don't have good track, you know, in doing that. We've seen it with the social media. So, yes, we need regulation, but we have to work in partnership with the private sector. There seems to be a tacit race on AI technology among the U.S., China, and other countries. How's the U.S. doing right now? So far, so good for us, because it started here, and we are really, you know, expanding. You know, I see this one in my school at San Jose State, where the interest on AI is really high. California has, you know, 35 companies of the top 50 AI companies in the world. California has about 25% of the AI patents in the world, and the conference and the papers and research is here in California. The companies like Netflix, they are offering jobs that will, with a salary of $900,000 for an AI, you know, expert. So, as we speak, this wave of AI is different from other waves before, because AI, if anybody studied the history of AI, they would know that AI wants something called winter AI, which goes up and down. What we are seeing here is a little bit different, because it's not just a standalone technology. It's actually attaching itself to everything we're doing. All right, Professor Benafa of San Jose State University, thank you so much. Thank you.