The Times Tech Podcast Socos Labs' Vivienne Ming: “I want to build better people”
Jan 10, 2020
Vivienne Ming, a theoretical neuroscientist and founder of Socos Labs, dives into the ethics of artificial intelligence. She critiques ethics training, arguing that tools mirror their creators' biases. Discussing the impact of automation, she highlights how jobs are changing, emphasizing that universal basic income alone won’t replace the need for meaningful work. Ming also explores the necessity of teaching people to adapt and learn, proposing a tech-wise council to guide AI policy. Her personal journey shapes her views on empathy and the future of work.
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Tools Trained For Hammers, Not Homes
- Machine learning training often teaches engineers to optimize narrow tasks on clean datasets, not solve messy human problems.
- That mismatch explains why systems like Amazon's hiring AI reproduced biased outcomes from historical data.
Turned Down Amazon Chief Scientist Role
- Vivienne recounts being offered chief scientist roles at Amazon and declining because she disagreed with their workforce vision.
- She offered to work for free to upskill logistics workers, but Amazon refused that approach.
AI Replaces Brief Expert Judgments
- AI can replicate brief expert human judgments cheaply, faster, and often more accurately than humans.
- That capability threatens many middle-class professional tasks and the jobs built around expert judgment.
