Manjeet Rege, a professor in the Department of Software Engineering and Data Science at the University of St. Thomas, spoke with FOX 9 about the rapid rise of artificial intelligence and the growing need for ethical oversight and consumer awareness. Rege explains that as AI becomes more integrated into everyday life and the workplace, people must become more AI literate and thoughtful about how their data is used.
From the conversation:
Rege: I’ve been working in AI and data science for the past two decades now, and earlier, when I started, AI was primarily in narrow applications, like when you go onto Amazon, when you browse something on Netflix, the recommender engine behind the scenes unlocks itself. But in the past three years, it has moved on from these processes behind the scenes to becoming a lot more mainstream. With the large language models and generative AI, you can now generate text, music, videos, and all of those examples that we’ve been seeing.
So this big leap that we have seen in the past just three years is something that you could not have imagined a decade ago. It is important to be ahead of the game, because it also brings up ethical and governance issues, and I realize that there’s a section of the audience that is always fed on fear and concern about jobs, so that’s what this book basically talks about.
Lauren Andrego: Does kind of feel like the Wild West right now with AI? Every app, every website that I use now seems to have a plug-in AI feature. It feels largely unregulated. So, from your perspective, what do you think it needs most pressingly to be regulated right now?
Rege: There needs to be more regulation. Right now, the EU has an AI act, and we have talked about that in the book as well. AI is world over, so when you browse something online, then you make use of an app. That data could be harvested and utilized by an app that could be based in India or China, for example. So, there needs to be a lot more regulation, and even consumers need to be a lot more aware about what information they are volunteering. If you upload your financial information to ChatGPT, it gets utilized for training.
Kelly O’Connell: Sure, and that’s the thing you mentioned. There is a lot of fear, and some of that is warranted, because it’s so unknown, whether it be about jobs or taking over things, or whatever. You mentioned being AI aware, and I think all of us want to be better at this. We know it’s not going anywhere. So, what are your top tips for people to be better consumers when it comes to AI?
Rege: This week I spoke with a CEO of a company that has 1,800 employees around the world, and the CEO said that by the end of the year they’re going to let go of 10% of those employees. When I asked who those employees would be, it would be the employees who do not embrace AI. So the point I’m trying to make here is that you have to be AI literate, that’s No. 1. No. 2 is to lean in on skills that cannot be taken over by AI. …
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