So begins a News-Gazette ($) “Illini Insider” series on artificial intelligence, featuring interviews with a collection of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty and alumni to gather their predictions for the future impact of AI in their respective areas of expertise.
Siebel School Experts
The future of AI: In the home, on the battlefield, in space, sports and beyond featured CS professors Tarek Abdelzaher and Volodymyr Kindratenko from The Grainger College of Engineering Siebel School of Computing and Data Science. Describing the use of AI on the battlefield, Abdelzaher said that “The driving force behind AI’s proliferation in the battlefield will be fear. Fear that if we do not utilize the AI ilize the AI first, we shall lose to those who do.”
Kindratenko directly addressed one widespread fear surrounding AI. “At their core, LLMs simply predict a sequence of words that make sense in a given context. Yes, they’ve been trained on vast amounts of human knowledge, but they’re still just tools. That’s how we should think about AI today: as a toolbox for doing small things faster.”
Campbell observed that “Estimates of the yearly growth in AI/surveillance expenditures suggest that it is enormous, exceeding billions of dollars by some accounts. But what do we want? Asking our artificial intelligences about how we should use them is perhaps like asking history to repeat itself. The challenge is to take advantage of a technology without falling prey to its abuses.”
The future of AI: Seeing stars, spreading misinformation, surveilling employees and more featured insights from CS professors Kris Hauser and Tong Zhang. Hauser warned that “Rampant and habitual use of AI will cause our current educational norms to degrade faster than educators can adapt.” He called for emphasis on training students in “basic mental functions” – attention, memorization, critical thinking and determination – across the educational process from K-12 to college.
Zhang said that in the physical world, “we can see some special applications getting more mature, like autonomous driving or AI-guided lab experiments.”
Grainger Engineering Affiliations
Tarek Abdelzaher is an Illinois Grainger Engineering professor of computer science. Tarek Abdelzaher holds the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Professor chair and is a Willett Faculty Scholar.
Vikram Adve is an Illinois Grainger Engineering professor of computer science and is affiliated with the Center for Digital Agriculture, Coordinated Science Laboratory, and Information Trust Institute. Vikram Adve holds the Donald B. Gillies Professorship.
Roy Campbell is an Illinois Grainger Engineering professor of computer science and is affiliated with Illinois Quantum Information Science and Technology Center. Roy Campbell is Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Professor Emeritus.
Kris Hauser is an Illinois Grainger Engineering professor of computer science.
Volodymyr Kindratenko is an Illinois Grainger Engineering professor of computer science and is Director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence Innovation.
Tong Zhang is an Illinois Grainger Engineering professor of computer science.