TED Talks discussion: The new generation of computers is programming itself

I just watched the TED Talks presentation from the April 2010 conference, about future AI usage and computer learning titled; The new generation of computers is programming itself. The speaker Sebastian Thrun talked about how he believes humanity can benefit from computers learning to program themselves. This would open up other opportunities for humans to develop differently and remove unnecessary tasks from society.

I thought this discussion was extremely interesting, not just speaking of what they think is possibly but positive social advantages to having AI take over things to let humans be more free, to create and learn.

Some of the same technology that was used for creating a self-driving care was also being used in testing screening skin cancers. That’s a AI usage I hadn’t thought of and the way they described it seems like a very beneficial usage. Having an app to pre-screen yourself with more than 90% accuracy and then go to a doctors for verification. That would be a very big impact on health. They did put up some visuals on this during the talk to show what the AI would be seeing and scanning for.

I thought the pace of the talk was really good, it was relatively short at 24 minutes, but it felt like it flew by with how interesting the subject manner was, it had some technical aspect but I feel like any one listening would get the concepts of what they were discussing and be able to enjoy the presentation.

I think there was definitely a path that the discussion was leaning toward, more of the way that AI/deep learning can be helpful to society and not feared. Everyone always talks about the possible negative implications of AI and smart computers, very rarely do you have the optimist talking about what is possible.

I liked the way the presenter Chris Anderson kept things going, didn’t really let the discussion get off topic. I probably could have listened to this talk for an hour + and still have been interested in it.