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Tina Eliassi-Rad

👤 Person
308 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
301 | Tina Eliassi-Rad on Al, Networks, and Epistemic Instability

The problem is that I can hold a human accountable. I can sue a human being. Who am I going to sue? You know what I mean? And especially in America, we're very litigious. And so then this gets into accountability. And in fact, there's a lot of work in the government.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
301 | Tina Eliassi-Rad on Al, Networks, and Epistemic Instability

The problem is that I can hold a human accountable. I can sue a human being. Who am I going to sue? You know what I mean? And especially in America, we're very litigious. And so then this gets into accountability. And in fact, there's a lot of work in the government.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
301 | Tina Eliassi-Rad on Al, Networks, and Epistemic Instability

For example, our government is putting a lot of our tax dollars into like trustworthy machine learning, trustworthy AI, et cetera, et cetera. And to me, it rings a little hollow because there's no accountability. Like, how can I trust you if there's no accountability? I feel like they go hand to hand. And so there's some of that going on, which is like, You know, who am I going to sue?

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
301 | Tina Eliassi-Rad on Al, Networks, and Epistemic Instability

For example, our government is putting a lot of our tax dollars into like trustworthy machine learning, trustworthy AI, et cetera, et cetera. And to me, it rings a little hollow because there's no accountability. Like, how can I trust you if there's no accountability? I feel like they go hand to hand. And so there's some of that going on, which is like, You know, who am I going to sue?

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
301 | Tina Eliassi-Rad on Al, Networks, and Epistemic Instability

Am I going to sue OpenAI because it's sexist and misogynist? Like one of its products is sexist and misogynist. You know, that's not the case right now.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
301 | Tina Eliassi-Rad on Al, Networks, and Epistemic Instability

Am I going to sue OpenAI because it's sexist and misogynist? Like one of its products is sexist and misogynist. You know, that's not the case right now.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
301 | Tina Eliassi-Rad on Al, Networks, and Epistemic Instability

Perhaps, right? The thing is, at this point, what it gives out is what's the most probable and what it believes you will like, right? So it's a two-place function, what's probable and what you will like. But yes, you could definitely do that.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
301 | Tina Eliassi-Rad on Al, Networks, and Epistemic Instability

Perhaps, right? The thing is, at this point, what it gives out is what's the most probable and what it believes you will like, right? So it's a two-place function, what's probable and what you will like. But yes, you could definitely do that.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
301 | Tina Eliassi-Rad on Al, Networks, and Epistemic Instability

And there's this comedian, unfortunately, I forget his name now, but he was saying the secret to a long marriage is to never say what comes to your mind first or second. Always say the The third thing that comes to your mind, right? And this goes back to what you were just saying. Maybe you should just say this third thing, the third most probable thing.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
301 | Tina Eliassi-Rad on Al, Networks, and Epistemic Instability

And there's this comedian, unfortunately, I forget his name now, but he was saying the secret to a long marriage is to never say what comes to your mind first or second. Always say the The third thing that comes to your mind, right? And this goes back to what you were just saying. Maybe you should just say this third thing, the third most probable thing.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
301 | Tina Eliassi-Rad on Al, Networks, and Epistemic Instability

And in fact, along those lines, usually the students who use these generative AI tools for like math problems, math homeworks, the first answer is usually wrong because a lot of the answers that have been uploaded into like Course Hero, et cetera, et cetera, they're wrong. Usually it's the second answer that's the correct answer.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
301 | Tina Eliassi-Rad on Al, Networks, and Epistemic Instability

And in fact, along those lines, usually the students who use these generative AI tools for like math problems, math homeworks, the first answer is usually wrong because a lot of the answers that have been uploaded into like Course Hero, et cetera, et cetera, they're wrong. Usually it's the second answer that's the correct answer.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
301 | Tina Eliassi-Rad on Al, Networks, and Epistemic Instability

These are just anecdotal, right? Like I haven't had anybody do like a systemic study of this, but that like usually the first answer is not quite there, right?

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
301 | Tina Eliassi-Rad on Al, Networks, and Epistemic Instability

These are just anecdotal, right? Like I haven't had anybody do like a systemic study of this, but that like usually the first answer is not quite there, right?

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
301 | Tina Eliassi-Rad on Al, Networks, and Epistemic Instability

Yeah. So in the true computer science, AI, machine learning sense, we're very good at coming up with names for our system. So we called it Life2Vec. So we're just putting your life into a vector space, whether you like it or not.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
301 | Tina Eliassi-Rad on Al, Networks, and Epistemic Instability

Yeah. So in the true computer science, AI, machine learning sense, we're very good at coming up with names for our system. So we called it Life2Vec. So we're just putting your life into a vector space, whether you like it or not.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
301 | Tina Eliassi-Rad on Al, Networks, and Epistemic Instability

But you're just a vector in this vector space. Now, basically, the idea is that if you look at these large language models, right, so they're analyzing sequences. And so as human beings, we also have a life story. That's a sequence. Right. And so I was lucky enough to work with a group of scientists in Denmark.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
301 | Tina Eliassi-Rad on Al, Networks, and Epistemic Instability

But you're just a vector in this vector space. Now, basically, the idea is that if you look at these large language models, right, so they're analyzing sequences. And so as human beings, we also have a life story. That's a sequence. Right. And so I was lucky enough to work with a group of scientists in Denmark.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
301 | Tina Eliassi-Rad on Al, Networks, and Epistemic Instability

So if America has a surveillance capitalism, in Denmark they have surveillance socialism. So there is a department there, Department of Statistics, they call it, like Ministry of Statistics that collects information about people. And so we had information for about 6 million people who have lived in Denmark from 2008 to 2020.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
301 | Tina Eliassi-Rad on Al, Networks, and Epistemic Instability

So if America has a surveillance capitalism, in Denmark they have surveillance socialism. So there is a department there, Department of Statistics, they call it, like Ministry of Statistics that collects information about people. And so we had information for about 6 million people who have lived in Denmark from 2008 to 2020.