Speakers and audience members grappled with the many dimensions of AI’s impact at a conference at MIT Wednesday. Journalist Karen Hao ’15 and scholar Paola Ricaurte delivered the keynotes.

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At an MIT symposium, journalist Karen Hao and scholar Paola Ricaurte delivered keynotes questioning the current trajectory of AI development. Hao argued that the massive scale-up of data, compute, and large language models is unnecessary and harmful, pointing to environmental costs, energy consumption, and the human toll on gig workers. She proposed an alternative vision centered on small, task-specific AI models like AlphaFold that tackle well-scoped problems with curated datasets. Ricaurte emphasized purpose-driven AI that responds to the real needs of communities. Both speakers called on the public to actively participate in shaping AI's direction.

What’s the right path for AI?