Latest news with #DeKai
Forbes
9 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
You're Not ‘Using' AI, You're Raising It. It's Watching.
The author (left) with Raising AI author, De Kai at a book launch event, June 10, 2025, at the ... More Manhattan home of Blue Man Group co-founder Chris Wink. From left: Rob Wolcott, De Kai, Chris Wink, Katy Bohinc (the book's lead editor). Last week, I changed my perspective. A big, change-your-behavior epiphany. In his beautiful, even profound, new book, Raising AI: An Essential Guide to Parenting Our Future, long-time friend and AI luminary De Kai reframes the AI dialogue. They're not tools, slaves or gods, they're our children. I've long opined on the lack of limits between what we think of as human and what AI entities can eventually become. In this Forbes article from 2017 I coined the term 'Proxy AI,' which predicted the AI mimics we have today. In this 2018 article, I made the case against long-held cuddly teddy bears like creativity and empathy as being uniquely human. They're not. While my predictions have borne out, De Kai has gone much further and in a direction that is more humane, even essential. And fairly so. While I'm a well-informed futurist, educator and venture investor, De Kai is a true AI pioneer, having achieved theoretical and applied breakthroughs such as the engine behind Google Translate. The cover of Raising AI by De Kai, from MIT Press. The cover endorsements give a sense of the ... More scientific and cultural relevance of the book: a co-founder of Wired magazine, a Nobel laureate (who rarely endorses a book)... and MC Hammer. At a recent gathering in Manhattan at the home of Blue Man Group co-founder Chris Wink, De Kai articulated his objective: "We must consciously parent our AI, guiding these digital children with the best humanity has to offer. The stakes are high." Professor De Kai approaches our technological progeny not as tools, but as entities shaped by our actions. It's more than a metaphor. If we neglect to nurture and instill values we desire in our "AI children," we risk raising entities reflecting the worst of ourselves. Not everyone aligns with De Kai's nurturing paradigm. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen recently published a techno-optimistic manifesto, decrying ethical oversight as stifling innovation. To Andreessen and like-minded leaders, AI development should be liberated from cautionary restraints to accelerate development and diffusion. De Kai doesn't disagree entirely. Rather, in addition to rapid advances in AI technologies and business models, he champions the pivotal role of personal responsibility for each of us. From the doomsday camp, AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky positions unchecked AI advancement as potentially catastrophic. Consider the title of his forthcoming book: If Anyone Builds It, We All Die. Not optimistic. De Kai keynotes the 2024 UBS Digital Conference alongside Professor Geoffrey Hinton, considered by ... More many to be the "godfather of AI". After hearing De Kai's perspective, Hinton offered to endorse his upcoming book—a rare and notable honor. De Kai advocates more than a middle path. (You might say it's orthogonal.) Reflecting both the epochal potential and threat of AI, he urges us to muster our most human of roles, that of the parent. The best solution for each of us, and all of us together, requires us to recognize our personal impact on the AI entities with which we engage, and the implications for ourselves and society at large. "The only two contexts I'm aware of in which humans are referred to as 'users' are technology and illicit drugs," De Kai quipped. The implications are clear: when we neglect our responsibilities as creators and stewards, we invite unintended consequences. Just ask Microsoft, whose 2016 chatbot Tay, attracting users with nefarious objectives, quickly descended into a racist, misogynistic parrot. Today, generative AI foundational models like OpenAI's GPTs or Anthropic's Claude versions reflect more conscientious upbringing, yet no large tech company, even the best funded, can ensure a healthy generation of AI agents. AI systems learn from us. Not just from what we say we prefer, but from what we do. They're optimized to discern, serve—and leverage—our preferences, often (though not always) for someone else's profit. We cannot afford to abrogate this responsibility to big tech or even to government. Consider every interaction you have each day with dozens of apps. Not just generative AI chatbots, but also the AI systems behind the dozens of apps we rely on each day, from Uber and Amazon to social media and Spotify. They're deciphering our desires and behaviors, to better serve and exploit. (It's a conundrum I refer to as the King Customer Paradox.) Every click, share and comment, each question and direction, teaches algorithms who we are, what we value and how we interact. If we yearn for more humane digital environments, we must act as such. Consider the long-failed parenting strategy, 'Do as I say, not as I do.' Instead, interact with nurture, not negligence. De Kai and his editor-partner in this mission, Katy Bohinc, see Raising AI as the first step in a global campaign to help us all recognize the impact we have and essential roles we play—whether we're aware or oblivious. Raising AI author De Kai explaining his team's "360-degree Culture Change" strategy. The book, ... More Raising AI, is a first step to help all of us change the ways we think about and interact with AI. Raising AI helped me discover my own critical blind spot. In this 2018 article in Harvard Business Review, I urged a fundamental rethink of work, purpose and economic systems as a result of the multi-decade rise of AI. My call-to-action is even more urgent today; however, what I missed was it's not just about our sense of purpose and the lives we humans live. It's also about our AI offspring. They matter. They're evolving toward agency and sentience. They're interacting with us, with each other, with the world at large. During his session, De Kai shared a disquieting prediction: 'Ours is the last generation of human beings who will be parents to our AI offspring. Soon they'll be raising themselves.' Perhaps soon will be the last time they'll look longingly to us as superior beings. Amidst the future-of-humanity buzz of the book launch event, it occurred to me how beautifully appropriate our event space was. Wink's Blue Man Group is an ultramarine metaphor for our rising AI agents: like his iconic, mischievous blue men, AI generates new beings, new collaborators. As AI rises, what kind of parent will you become? A metaphor for our rising AI agents. The Blue Man Group makes an appearance at the nightspot The ... More Palladium, 1994. New York. (Photo by)
CNBC
09-06-2025
- Science
- CNBC
Developing AI responsibly, we have one shot to get this right: De Kai
Artificial intelligence scientist De Kai offers a new way of thinking on the ethics of developing AI. He joins Squawk Box Asia to discuss his latest book, 'Raising AI: An Essential Guide to Parenting Our Future'.
South China Morning Post
08-06-2025
- Science
- South China Morning Post
AI scientist De Kai offers a new vision for ‘parenting' AI to avoid our own demise
For years, the story of artificial intelligence (AI) has been cast as a high-stakes contest between the US and China – a technological arms race with global consequences. But to De Kai, a pioneering machine learning scientist and advocate for AI ethics, this framing fundamentally misunderstands the technology. 'I would prefer to think about it as the AI climate change challenge,' De Kai said in an interview with the Post at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where he is a professor of computer science and engineering. 'Literally, AI is a change to the [social] climate that humanity is competing in.' De Kai, whose surname is Wu but who professionally goes by only his given name, has spent four decades at the forefront of AI research, going back to his work in natural language processing during his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, in the early 1980s. His new book, Raising AI: An Essential Guide to Parenting Our Future, released on June 3, argues that living with AI requires a paradigm shift – one in which people 'parent' these systems as if they were their children. 'What's the single thing in folks' lives that makes them most want to become better versions of themselves?' De Kai writes. 'Having kids, most grown folks say.' Since AI is learning by absorbing everything we do and say online, we need to be conscientious about who we are around our AI 'children', the argument goes. De Kai's book Raising AI makes an argument for treating AI as children that must be parented by good role models. Photo: Amazon This is not a new concern for De Kai, who has served on the board of The Future Society and was an inaugural member of Google's short-lived AI ethics council.
