Scientist and Writer Jacopo Pantaleoni On The Future Of Artificial Intelligence
An Interview With David Leichner
Moreover, at a more fundamental level, we have to recall that automation historically has been widely used as an instrument of power and power concentration. And we are already seeing that the advancement of AI is fuelling an enormous concentration of capital, infrastructure and human resources in a very small niche of the tech sector, dominated by a few supersized corporations.
As a part of our series about the future of Artificial Intelligence, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jacopo Pantaleoni, author of The Quickest Revolution: An Insider’s Guide to Sweeping Technological Change And Its Largest Threats.
Jacopo Pantaleoni is a tech industry insider who has worked at the cutting edge of high-performance computing for the past 25 years. He is a two-time recipient of the High-Performance Graphics ‘Test of Time’ award, which recognizes published research that has had a broad and lasting impact on computer graphics. The foundational algorithms he created for real-time ray tracing ‒ a technique that is at the core of many of the current Metaverse and digital humans initiatives — is already playing an important role in revolutionising the gaming industry today. Outside of computer graphics, Jacopo led NVIDIA’s early efforts in high-throughput DNA sequencing in close collaboration with the Broad Genomics Institute, and contributed to the design and success of the massively parallel graphics processing units (GPUs), used in most hyper-scale data centers and AI factories today.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you share with us the ‘backstory” of how you decided to pursue this career path in AI?
Technically speaking, I never pursued a career in AI as such. However, in my work at NVIDIA, I was an early contributor to the massively parallel, high-performance computing world of GPUs that made the latest wave of AI possible. Working at NVIDIA gave me a unique vantage point for glimpsing into the future of AI, and beginning to think about its longer-term consequences more than a decade ago.
What lessons can others learn from your story?
My early and extensive exposure to technological innovation gave me a very strong sense of, and concrete experience in, the unfathomable, exponentially accelerating speed of progress in our computational capabilities. This speed of progress is often described as Moore’s Law, although that concept normally refers only to hardware, whereas in practice technological progress is fueled by many other innovations, including computer architecture and networking, but also software, and now AI itself.
Personally, I hope to inspire other people in my field — researchers and developers — to become more aware of the potential social consequences of the sheer speed of these changes.
Can you tell our readers about the most interesting projects you are working on now?
I have spent a good portion of the last two years working on my upcoming book, The Quickest Revolution, that aims to provide an insider’s perspective on this quickest of technological revolutions, and analyze in great detail its potential social impact, its greatest, concrete dangers, and its many side effects.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
Throughout my career I have encountered so many people I will be forever grateful to, that it is hard to pick only one, but I undoubtedly have to thank Jensen Huang for letting me participate in the incredible ride that NVIDIA has been, as well as some amazing researchers like Timo Aila and Tero Karras for providing me with unique models of passion, dedication and craftsmanship to aspire to.
What are the 5 things that most excite you about the AI industry? Why?
I have dedicated my entire adult life, and a good chunk of my teenage years to improving computation and simulation. To me, AI is, fundamentally, the highest peak of this process — a new, and incredibly powerful tool to insert into and improve our computational models. As a tool, AI can and will certainly prove tremendously useful for applications such as disease diagnosis, genomics, drug discovery, and climate simulation, to list just a few.
What are the 5 things that concern you about the AI industry? Why?
Despite the incredibly useful applications of AI mentioned above, I am not terribly excited by the AI industry as it has currently developed. AI is enabling the automation of tasks that, until very recently, were considered to be the unique domain of human capabilities. While automating tasks like cancer detection can indeed be tremendously useful, the wide success and diffusion of Generative AI for content creation of all kinds, from text to illustration, shows that the financial world is far more interested in these more lucrative applications of AI. While these applications may be useful, they also have plenty of potentially negative ramifications.
This use of AI is strongly tied to the so-called attention economy, the new market enabled by machine learning algorithms and services designed to grab and keep a user’s attention. By constantly flooding our brains with enormous amounts of procedurally generated and distributed (mis)information, and by limiting our ability to focus and dedicate time to distil information into knowledge, these products are causing a broader and broader cognitive weakening. A process that, with the wild proliferation of fake news and conspiracy theories, is increasingly putting democracy at risk.
Yet another aspect of this revolution that demands the greatest attention is the way AI is being applied to reduce the cost of human labour. Generative AI is already partly automating sectors such as customer service, digital illustration and computer programming. But there is a real danger this will be extended to far more sensitive sectors as well, such as education (i.e. through digital humans) and security (e.g. autonomous weapons). While making the cost of business operations cheaper, these developments may also end up disrupting people’s livelihoods and becoming a menace to freedom in many ways, demanding very careful ethical and political consideration.
Moreover, at a more fundamental level, we have to recall that automation historically has been widely used as an instrument of power and power concentration. And we are already seeing that the advancement of AI is fuelling an enormous concentration of capital, infrastructure and human resources in a very small niche of the tech sector, dominated by a few supersized corporations.
As you know, there is an ongoing debate between prominent scientists, (personified as a debate between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg,) about whether advanced AI poses an existential danger to humanity. What is your position about this?
If we look at what most of these people (often with deep ties to and vested interests in AI) are saying, these ‘existential dangers’ are typically linked to the possibility of us ‘losing control’ of AI — for example with AI achieving superhuman intelligence or self-consciousness.
However, in practice, none of these threats has much of a scientific foundation, and drawing attention to them risks distracting us from the far more concrete dangers, often fueled or being taken advantage of by the very people highlighting these more ephemeral risks. I believe that we should be far more concerned about a small circle of people having tremendous control of AI, rather than all of us losing our control of AI. At the moment, there is not much evidence that we are losing control of AI, but I do believe that we risk losing control of the power that AI can afford.
What can be done to prevent such concerns from materializing? And what can be done to assure the public that there is nothing to be concerned about?
I believe the very first step is becoming aware of the most pressing and concrete issues facing our society today. And once that happens, I think the public should demand far stronger regulation in terms of antitrust and other policies geared towards limiting the financial and political power of corporations, as well as recognizing and treating AI and related critical infrastructure as public goods.
The public should be concerned about AI, because it will impact their future, and that of their children.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world? Can you share a story?
I hope my upcoming book, The Quickest Revolution: An Insider’s Guide to Sweeping Technological Change, and Its Largest Threats, will do exactly that.
As you know, there are not that many women in your industry. Can you advise what is needed to engage more women into the AI industry?
I think that things are moving in the right direction, and some of the larger companies, to their credit, are leading the sector in terms of representation. Meta reported 36.7% of Leadership roles were held by women, and Alphabet at 30.5% –although the industry average, at 11%, is a bleak reality.
What I think that everyone in the industry needs to be careful of, however, is not to fall into the trap of accepting positions of power only because of their appeal, without being ready to critically analyze and constantly question their contributions to society, and fighting for important causes.
I hope greater diversity generally will improve engagement with the industry, while doing something positive for the issues facing the industry at large by challenging the status quo, bringing in new perspectives, and helping tackle broad societal issues like growing economic inequality.
What is your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share a story of how that had relevance to your own life?
If I had to choose just one, I’d probably go for James Baldwin’s “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within”, where love is intended, very broadly, as passion for something. When I began understanding, and actively looking into, the problems I was indirectly contributing to with my work, I had to cast doubt on my entire career, and lifetime passion. But it is exactly this burning passion that allowed me to overcome fear, and confront the bigger issues.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
I would like to raise awareness, pushing colleagues, and people in general, to adopt an attitude of critical thinking, and looking at technology through a variety of lenses: the historical, economic, sociological and ethical ones, as a start.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
You can follow my work on my website jpantaleoni.com or on LinkedIn. I invite you to also read my book, The Quickest Revolution: An Insider’s Guide to Sweeping Technological Change, and Its Largest Threats, when it is published in the fall of 2023.
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.
About The Interviewer: David Leichner is a veteran of the Israeli high-tech industry with significant experience in the areas of cyber and security, enterprise software and communications. At Cybellum, a leading provider of Product Security Lifecycle Management, David is responsible for creating and executing the marketing strategy and managing the global marketing team that forms the foundation for Cybellum’s product and market penetration. Prior to Cybellum, David was CMO at SQream and VP Sales and Marketing at endpoint protection vendor, Cynet. David is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Jerusalem Technology College. He holds a BA in Information Systems Management and an MBA in International Business from the City University of New York.
