Key takeaways from the conversation at Stanford

From the author of the Telegram channel “Analytics and Growth mind-set“

Stanford (one of the best universities in the world) published a conversation with Andrew Ng and Mehram Sahami about How AI is changing programming and learning.

This conversation, in my opinion, provides answers to many of the questions and concerns that are currently arising regarding AI.

— Andrew Ng is the founder of Coursera, a pioneer in machine learning and online education, former head of Google Brain and director of the AI ​​Lab at Stanford.
— Mehran Sahami is a professor and head of the computer science department at Stanford.

Full video hereand then there will be key conclusions.

How does AI affect the ability to write code?

1. Programming is becoming accessible to more and more people – no longer need to remember all the details of the syntax in order to get the computer to execute the necessary commands.

2. Tasks that previously took months and required extensive experience can now be completed by even beginners in a matter of weeks.

3. However, AI still lacks the context to make good decisions. People have this context.

What knowledge and skills will be important?

1. Many skills will become less important, and that's okay. We will move up the level of abstraction: use higher-level tools that simplify tasks while hiding technical details.

2. It is important to teach skills that will arise in 2, 3, 10 years. However, AI is evolving so quickly that skill prediction is becoming a challenging task.

3. It is important to maintain an emphasis on fundamental skills: the ability to understand how code works, analyze and improve it. And while AI can help automate routine tasks, the importance of fundamental understanding will not go away.

4. For many people, it is important to learn programming now. Programming is not just knowing the syntax of a particular language, such as Python, but the ability to break down a task into steps and clearly explain to the computer what exactly you want it to do. The ability to accurately formulate your instructions to the computer is what matters now. Programming also helps develop logical and systematic thinking, which can then be applied to solving any problems, be it in business, science or any other field.

5. We must be prepared for the fact that change will happen quickly, and we will need to not only learn new skills, but also rethink our approaches to education and training. AI gives us powerful tools, but how we use them is up to us.

Will we all be replaced?

1. It is important to understand that AI alone will not create or destroy jobs, it is people who will create or destroy jobs by making decisions about how to use these technologies.

2. Maybe in the future we will have AGI (artificial general intelligence) that can do everything a human can do, but that is still a long way off.

3. AI is often associated with sci-fi apocalypse scenarios, which distracts attention from real and important issues such as system errors and bias in algorithms.