Hello World! 🤖

Welcome to Keeping Humans in the Loop

I have been thinking about Keeping Humans in the Loop for a while now. Interest and excitement around Artificial Intelligence (AI) has skyrocketed in the past year thanks to chatbot apps like ChatGPT and text-to-image generation apps like Midjourney. However, with this surging interest is the inevitable hype cycle and sometimes unrealistic demands made on this technology.

It’s been almost a year since ChatGPT’s inception and we have seen some pretty wild developments, including attempts at building AI agents (a system that can “think” or make decisions), the creation of several opensource Large Language Models (LLMs) that can give ChatGPT a run for its money (for certain tasks) and even text-to-video apps like RunwayML.

We have also seen a rise in backlash against the use of AI. Protests have broken out in Hollywood over AI potentially being used to write (or edit) scripts being used to take the digital likeness of an actor without informed consent and fair compensation. Significant voices such as Geoff Hinton and Yoshua Bengio who are both considered “Godfathers” of AI, have warned us about the existential threats of AI, even causing Hinton to leave his role at Google to speak more openly about “dangers” of the technology he helped to develop. Mustafa Suleyman (founder of Inflection AI and co-founder of DeepMind) has warned us about the “containment problem”, which describes how humanity has never really successfully contained a technology, where we may be engulfed in an AI tsunami rather than a wave, causing disruption like never seen before. There was also the proposed six-month pause letter that was circulated earlier this year, aimed at fostering a collaborative effort in slowing down AI developments worldwide (wishful thinking).

I have mentioned hype around AI, although, this time it feels different. There is something about this AI wave that cannot be dismissed as merely a trend. Maybe it’s the constant developments that are almost happening weekly, or perhaps it is because I too am slowly being influenced by the techno-optimism that surrounds me daily. Whatever your thoughts and opinions, we simply cannot turn back the clock. This technology at least in its current form is here to stay, and we (humans) have much work to do in determining where it fits in to give us the most benefit.

I view technology as a means to empower humanity and improve our lives. In particular, I see AI as a tool to augment our abilities, to essentially remove the repetitive nature of some undesirable tasks and to enhance our understanding of complicated topics. This view considers us humans as being a part of the loop. When it comes to AI technology, ensuring humans are in the loop not only complements our capabilities but also prevents the black-box nature of the current AI algorithms from blindly overtaking our decision-making.

A little about me: I obtained a PhD in AI in digital pathology in 2022, where my focus was on deep learning for necrosis and mitosis detection in canine sarcoma biopsy images. I have worked as a data scientist at the Veterinary Health Innovation Engine (vHive) and have collaborated on some exciting data science projects with animal health focused pharmaceuticals and massive conglomerates. I now currently lead applied AI initiatives at Surrey DataHub where we are focused on researching, developing and integrating AI technologies thoughtfully and responsibly, ensuring they drive real-world outcomes. I will use these experiences as a data scientist, applied AI researcher and fellow human being to share my thoughts and sometimes provide breakdown explanations for some of the complicated topics that are trending. To be honest, I will also write these posts as a sort of archive for myself. I have the tendency to jump between topics, read several articles and then just forget about them or hope they just appear in my head when the time is right. I can already tell you that this rarely happens. In fact, you should see the number of bookmarks I have saved on LinkedIn and Twitter for “future” use.

For now, let’s remain in the loop.

Taran

[Following a trend on Threads, where Midjourney generated this image based on my Threads bio fed as a text prompt: “applied ai and data science, phd in ai and digital pathology”.]