The Importance of Specification in AI

Powerful new large-scale AI models like GPT-4 are showing dramatic improvements in reasoning, problem-solving, and language capabilities. This marks a phase change for artificial intelligence—and a signal of accelerating progress to come.

In this Microsoft Research Podcast series, AI scientist and engineer Ashley Llorens hosts conversations with his collaborators and colleagues about what these new models—and the models that will come next—mean for our approach to creating, understanding, and deploying AI, its applications in areas such as health care and education, and its potential to benefit humanity.

The third episode features Ece Kamar, deputy lab director at Microsoft Research Redmond. Kamar draws on decades of experience in AI research and an opportunity she and Microsoft colleagues had to evaluate and experiment with GPT-4 prior to its release in discussing the capabilities and limitations of today’s large-scale models. She explores the short-term mitigation techniques she and her team are using to make these models viable components of the AI systems that give them purpose and shares the long-term research questions that will help maximize their value. 

https://www.microsoft.com/research