The Times Tech Podcast Socos Labs' Vivienne Ming: “I want to build better people”
Jan 10, 2020
Vivienne Ming, a theoretical neuroscientist and founder of Socos Labs, dives into the ethics of artificial intelligence. She critiques ethics training, arguing that tools mirror their creators' biases. Discussing the impact of automation, she highlights how jobs are changing, emphasizing that universal basic income alone won’t replace the need for meaningful work. Ming also explores the necessity of teaching people to adapt and learn, proposing a tech-wise council to guide AI policy. Her personal journey shapes her views on empathy and the future of work.
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Most Code Will Be Machine-Generated
- Code generation by AI will likely replace much routine programming within a decade.
- Designers may soon iterate directly with models that produce working apps from descriptions.
AI Finds Visual Predictor Of Wage Gap
- Vivienne built an AI crawler analyzing 60,000 company sites to find predictors of wage gaps.
- It found leadership imagery (female faces) was the strongest predictor of smaller wage gaps.
Elite Judgment Underpins The Middle Class
- The professional middle class is founded on elite judgment skills that AI can democratize or deprofessionalize.
- Democratisation may create new creative roles or a bifurcated low-wage service sector.
