Tuning the Turing Machines

Speaker

Dan Saffer Assistant Professor of the Practice, Carnegie Mellon University

About this session

A hammer that requires practice to use is a bad hammer. A cello that doesn't is a bad cello. We judge tools by what they make; we judge instruments by what they make us. Almost every AI product right now is a tool: engineered so that what you get on day one is what you'll get in year three, and (don’t get me wrong) that's a real achievement. But what if AI products were something else? This talk makes the case for considering an instrument as a design target: capability that compounds with use instead of absconding with it. We'll go through the four properties that separate the two, and put our own practice on the table to see which of our skills we've surrendered.