Tom Mitchell
Founders
University Professor
Machine
Learning Department
Block Center for Technology and Society
School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
Tom.Mitchell@cmu.edu, 412 268 2611, GHC 8203 Assistant: Mary Stech, 412 268 6869
What about ChatGPT and related large AI Systems?
How will they impact us all? As a longtime researcher in AI, I'm excited about the ways in which these new AI systems can improve our healthcare, education, climate and more. At the same time, we need to think carefully about how to use them and how to prevent their misuse. I oppose recent suggestions that we simply ban their development, but I support and participate in efforts to anticipate their possible uses and impacts, and to help our leaders think through how governments should react.
- It will be useful to regulate AI, but primarily at the application level. For example, AI applications to medical diagnosis should be regulated very differently from AI applications to self-driving cars.
- Whitepaper "How Can AI Accelerate Science, and How Can Our Government Help?", July 2024.
- Slides from my presentation to the senior Repulican Senate staff, Washington D.C., July 17, 2023.
- A short fireside chat I had with Reid Hoffman, moderated by Ryan Heath about what is next for Generative AI, from the SCSP Global Emerging Technology Summit, Washington D.C., September 21, 2023.
- I currently chair a task force for the non-partisan, non-profit SCSP, to make recommendations to the U.S. government on the technology of Large Language Models, their impact on society, and actions the government might want to take in response.
- Overview paper Artificial Intelligence: History, Status, and Futures , Eric Horvitz and Tom Mitchell, October, 2024.
- AI will also impact jobs. For my work on this topic, see the Current Research item below entitled "How will AI change the future of work?"
Current Research
How can AI improve education? Watch my YouTube video from November 2023: Where Can AI Take Education by 2030?. My thesis: this is the decade when AI will truly revolutionize online education. Why? Because (1) for the first time we have finally have online education sites that have taught millions of students, providing more training data showing how students learn, than a human teacher could ever see in a 100-year teaching career, and (2) recent AI advances in machine learning, large natural language models, and reasoning give us the right tools to build AI agents that tutor online students. ...
How does the brain represent language meaning? We collect images of brain activity while human subjects read text, then use machine learning to analyze how observed brain activity represents language meaning. ...
How will AI change the future of work? I am co-chairing a U.S. National Academy study on "AI and the Future of Work", which will release its final report in fall 2024. Erik Bryjolfsson and I are co-chairing this study as a Congressionally-mandated follow on to a 2017 study we co-chaired on this same topic. ...
Textbook: Machine Learning
- Machine Learning, Tom Mitchell, McGraw Hill, 1997. (free download)
Publications