On Hard Fork, Casey and Kevin interviewed Open Ai CEO Sam Altman, before all the drama kicked off. It was a fascinating talk, more so listening after all the drama, I found particularly interesting his thoughts on the co-evolution of Ai. He comes across with well-balanced thoughts on the creation of such a societal shifting product as AI. In many ways, it reflects the evolution needed of all such products. They need to evolve alongside the community they are impacting to make the most change.

In the case of Ai, he highlighted the held beliefs that it should be worked on in private and then one day AGI launched to the world. Which clearly would be too much of a change too quickly. Instead, OpenAi chose to develop its products in the open and see what people thought and did with it. Which is a far better prospect than releasing a world shifting invention such as Ai overnight.

Society as a whole, or a large percentage of those exposed to, as with Google Glass, can, of course, reject things entirely. They can make clear that they don’t want this kind of product. That doesn’t make it a bad product, just too much change too quickly, or little perceived benefit. Which is why Sam was talking about the importance of these intellectual pieces of technology evolving in public.

Jack Goody and Daniel Bell coined the term intellectual technologies. They were both sociologists, referring to anything that could be used to improve our mental abilities — anything from an abacus, to a clock or a thermometer. Nicholas Car referred to the web as a new form of intellectual technology in his book The Shallows, one that is changing our brain both figuratively and actually. It is a new way of interfacing with the world around us, and so too are the new interaction methods for Ai.

The pros and cons of developing Ai aside, all of these advancements bring with them a new way of thinking and extending our cognitive abilities. The slow, steady walk towards AI being able to perform complex tasks is inevitable, however at least we have a chance to see how and where it fits into our lives. There will be upheaval, but by co-developing Ai with society as a whole, we at least have more time and space to work out where it will affect society most and cater to those effects.