At the recent Business Implications of Generative AI (BIG.AI@MIT) conference, some of the best thought leaders from academia, finance and industry grappled with the technology’s major dilemma: How to quickly embrace and adopt AI while protecting society from its harms. The inaugural event, held November 15 on the MIT campus, co-hosted by MIT IDE, Thinkers50 and Accenture, attracted more than 300 attendees.
For some panelists, the decision to dive in and adopt AI tools is obvious. They hope to reap efficiency and financial rewards, knowing that the technology’s full maturation will take time. They also suspect (probably correctly) that ChatGPT and other generative AI tools will soon be as ubiquitous as smartphones, spellcheckers and calculators.
Entrepreneurs and investors are jumping in, too, some with startling innovations. One startup founder described an AI system that can document common business processes—such as paying an invoice—by simply watching a video of a person performing that task. Several speakers spoke of impressive AI advances in healthcare, materials science, software development and more.
Yet others want to tread more cautiously. They see ethical and economic risks such as bias, increased market concentration, misinformation and mass unemployment.
In this report we highlight some of the high-level takeaways from the BIG.AI@MIT event and offer recaps of the sessions.
Download the 2024 BIG.AI@MIT Event Report HERE and view below.