Incentives, AI, and the people whose work changes

This gif brings me so much joy. It feels like the way I might have played a video game when I was a kid.

It's also a notoriously perfect example of misaligned reward functions delivering unintended results, as noted in OpenAI's published article: https://lnkd.in/dpm7_S3Q

But on Wednesday night Anna DeGiulio drew another parallel during her Ignite Talk at The AI Conference. "The boat is on fire" she said, "And we are all on it now."

She was referring to the big labs having commercial incentives to AI development and adoption, and those incentives may not be well aligned to the interests of those who will live with the results. This really struck me.

Wherever we sit in this space, creating new value needs to include a plan for the people whose work we’re changing. They should have a way to benefit from it too.