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Excerpt
August 2023, Opinion: "Artificial Intelligence seemed like a problem for tomorrow—until it wasn’t. The arrival of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot, in late 2022 engaged the popular imagination. But while at first much discussion seemed to be about how students might use ChatGPT to do their homework for them, the more serious implications soon became apparent, and thoughts quickly turned to the idea that artificial intelligence was evolving at a pace few had anticipated. Of course, we’ve been living with algorithms and machine learning and big data for some time—from ads that appear on our web browsers specifically tailored to our interests, to devices like Siri and Alexa that suggest answers and solutions to our daily problems, to more-serious applications such as chatbots that help us navigate bureaucracies and algorithms that suggest flight risk (and bail amounts) for people charged with criminal offenses. But suddenly AI appears more immediate, and perhaps less controllable, than before. At Harvard Kennedy School, AI within the sphere of public policy is being studied in myriad ways. Its perils and possibilities include the ethics of using AI and the treatment of sentient machines, the inbuilt prejudices of algorithms, how AI might vastly improve human decision-making, and the huge changes this new technology will bring to bear on the labor force and the economy. HKS experts—technologists and philosophers, economists and ethicists—tell us what they think about the AI revolution. " Read Via HKS