Paul Wang, professor, and chair of computer science at Morgan State University, and Rob Rosen, director and health sector technologist and strategist, led a discussion about artificial intelligence and HBCUs at the Leading Voices Summit
Wang began the discussion talking about artificial intelligence versus human intelligence. He said that AI allows people to complete tasks faster and more efficiently but there are some concerns about AI gaining too much power.
Wang elaborated on a study he did with AI and music. The song “Carnival of Venice” was played with different melodies and speeds using AI. He was also able to change the genre of music using AI.
“The reason for me to show this piece of videos I want to kind of give you a comparison between the stages of the highest level of learning creation,” Wang said.
While discussing AI, Wang talked about intentional bias. He said that credit scores are not race-neutral. Self-driving cars are more likely to recognize white pedestrians than Black pedestrians, resulting in decreased safety for darker skinned individuals. Wang also said that financial technology companies have shown to discriminate against Black and Latino households via higher mortgage interest rates.
Rosen asked the audience if machines think like humans. Alan Turing of “The Imitation Game” said that if humans think differently than one another, it’s possible that machines also think differently. Machines are given a baseline to compute so they are not just building ideas from scratch.
“If I was to contrast machine intelligence with human intelligence, I would say that machine intelligence is a muscle. It’s about processing as fast as you can very complex problems to come to an answer,” Rosen said.
Rosen said humans will have problems to solve even if AI is solving other problems such as flipping burgers at a fast food restaurant.
“I look forward to the day that all those repetitive tasks are replaced by hopefully something safer than the Terminator,” Rosen said.
Rosen encouraged people at all different levels to get involved in companies and activities that are developing AI.
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