The Hype and Reality of AI: Insights from Professor Judy Wajcman

The University of Bristol’s Bristol Business School hosted its inaugural ‘Future of Work’ Lecture on Monday 18th September 2023 with Guest Lecturer, Professor Judy Wajcman (LSE) on ‘Automation: is it really different this time as ChatGPT would have us believe’. The event was hosted in the University’s Engineshed building, home to Bristol Initiative Member TechSpark, which seeks to change the world through tech from Bristol. 

The lecture focused on the advances in Artificial Intelligence over the last couple of years and challenged the current ‘hype-cycle’ proliferating the rapid advancement and adoption of AI technologies, particularly Generative AI. Wajcman advocated a slower more considered adoption process in which ethical considerations were taken around discriminatory algorithms and technology that disrupts privacy, work-life balance, and workplace trust. 

This month [September 2023], the University of Bristol was announced as the host of the Isambard 4 Supercomputer. Isambard 4, one of the world’s first, large-scale, open AI supercomputers, will be focused on AI, led by Bristol experts Professor Simon McIntosh-Smith and Dr Sadaf Alam with their team in High Performance Computing.  

Infamy and Hype

Professor Wajcman pointed to the combination of narratives around AI being seen as a solution for all modern societal problems alongside catastrophism narratives that describe the unprecedented impact and dangerous god-like potential for AI. This creates hype and is used as a marketing pitch to support rapid capital investment into AI. This hype-cycle, according to Wajcman, allows an environment of light-touch regulation to support the do-first-regulate-later AI-based arms race between global super-powers. 

An Historic Perspective

The professor challenged the views that rapid adoption of AI is inevitable by taking a historical prospective. Wajcman raised the need to see AI as a technological development through the lens of historic perspective and historical context. Utopian and dystopian philosophies around developing technologies have a long precedent, beyond even Frankenstein and Metropolis. The changing nature and quality of work and the involvement of workforces in the adoption of these changes have long been an issue. Adopting these technologies with the consultation and inclusion of those impacted by them is a logical step that should not be side-stepped by fears around slowing speed of adoption. 

Building on Inequalities

Wajcman discussed the inequity around AI. Using logic to provide efficiency and objectivity should always be combined with the acknowledgement that AI assisted technologies are a product shaped by their designers, model use-cases, and input data. Wajcman pointed to workers on Artificial Intelligence technologies within teams at Google and Facebook as an example of a heavily male dominated workforce and pointed to the wider culture of misogyny within Silicon Valley. In these innovation environments biases and knowledge gaps in lived experiences have the potential of being baked into the technologies of the future. This feeds into risks for Corporate Governance that decision makers should be aware of when adopting such technologies.  

So-What?

Professor Wajcman advised the room of budding Bristolian academics and tech workers to transfer the rich knowledge base from Science and Technology Studies into action – in consideration for organisational AI ethics policies and then filtering these policies into actions, culture, and practice. The professor also promoted learning and development that gives everyone involved in the design, decisions, and implementation of technology a fundamental understanding of wider contextual and ethical issues in AI. This will go some way to help promote better technology in practice. 

Professor Judy Wajcman promoted the following video produced by the Women in Data Science and AI Group with the Alan Turing Institute for AI, made in Bristol: 

In August 2023, the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, Norges Bank Investment Management made a statement on Artificial Intelligence, announcing the importance of responsible development and use of AI, it’s belief in a more comprehensive regulatory framework for AI that facilitates safe innovation and mitigation of adverse impacts, and encouraged companies to invest in board accountability, transparency, and risk management on AI, including elements on privacy, security, non-discrimination, and human oversight and control.  

The UK will host the world’s first AI Safety Summit on 1 and 2 November, bringing together leading countries, technology organisations, academic and civil society to discuss the risks created or exacerbated by the most powerful AI systems, and how to address and mitigate them. The Summit will also look at how the benefits of safe AI can be unlocked to improve lives. 

The University of Bristol runs regular public engagement events that businesses and members of the public can get involved in, find out more at: https://www.bristol.ac.uk/public-engagement/opportunities/  

University of Bristol Business School's Work Futures Research Group collaborates with businesses, unions, policymakers, civil society organisations and social movements to help shape the future of work: https://www.bristol.ac.uk/business-school/research/events/2023/judy-wajc...