Lenny Rachitsky: belief

Transcript context

…Yeah, okay, so Lenny, let me be very clear. I'm not a utopian, so it's not like I think AI will have no impact on jobs or people. In fact, I'm a humanist. I believe that whatever AI does, currently or in the future, is up to us. It's up to the people. So I do believe technology is a net positive for humanity. If you look at the long course of civilization, I think we are, and fundamentally, we're an innovative species that we... If you look at from written record thousands of years ago to now, humans just kept innovating ourselves and innovating our tools, and with that, we make lives better, we make work better, we build civilization, and I do believe AI is part of that. So that's where the optimism comes from. But I think every technology is a double-edged sword, and if we're not doing the right thing as a species, as a society, as communities, as individuals, we can screw this up as well. There's this line, I think, this was when you were presenting to Congress, "There's nothing artificial about AI. It's inspired by people. It's created by people, and most importantly, it impacts people." I don't have a question there, but what a great line. Yeah, I feel pretty deeply. I started working AI two and a half decades ago, and I've been having students for the past two decades and almost every student who graduates, I remind them when they graduate from my lab that your field is called artificial intelligence, but there's nothing artificial about it.…

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