My North Star for the Future of AI

Whatever academics like me thought artificial intelligence was, or what it might become, one thing is now undeniable: It is no longer ours to control. As a computer science professor at Stanford, it had been a private obsession of mine--a layer of thoughts that superimposed itself quietly over my view of the world. By the mid-2010s, however, the cultural preoccupation with AI had become deafeningly public. Billboards along Highway 101 on the California coast heralded the hiring sprees of AI start-ups. I'd hear fragments of conversation about AI on my car radio as I changed stations. The little red couch in my office, where so many of the projects that had defined our lab's reputation had been conceived, was becoming the place where I'd regularly plead with younger researchers to keep some room in their studies for the foundational texts upon which our science was built. I'd noticed, first to my annoyance and then to my concern, how consistently those texts were being neglected as the ever-accelerating advances of the moment drew everyone's attention to more topical sources of information.