CEO of The Atlantic encourages “engaged optimism” about AI in WashU talk

Nicholas Thompson spoke with a crowd of WashU community members about AI. (Rachel Benitez-Borrego | Staff Photographer)

Nicholas Thompson, former Editor-in-Chief of WIRED and now CEO of The Atlantic, has reported on artificial intelligence since 2017. As part of WashU’s +AI Perspectives Week, Thompson reflected on what he’s learned about AI and his advice for college students to a packed crowd of WashU students and community members on March 25.

Thompson mixed optimism and caution regarding AI, encouraging students and community members to embrace the opportunities presented by AI while warning about the societal risks and the threats posed by AI overutilization.

“[AI tools] are amazing. If you don’t use them, use them. If you’re a student, use them … ” Thompson said. “But remember also that they’re fools. They still hallucinate all the time; these agents make up garbage constantly.”

Thompson framed the talk through a series of 11 questions about AI and six principles to follow. In analyzing the questions, Thompson shared arguments for both sides of debates that split the academic community, such as how powerful AI will get, whether AI will make humans smarter or dumber, and the impacts AI will have on climate change, art, democracy, and more.

Thompson argued that early evidence hasn’t proved the claim that AI would cause massive unemployment in early-stage careers, though hiring is down in some fields like engineering and media that are having information taken from the industry for training data. Despite the threats to those industries, Thompson said those fields actually present the most opportunity for recent graduates.

“I was just talking to … undergraduates, and we were talking about a chart showing professions of ‘where there’s going to be the most churn,’ and some people were scared,” he said. “‘Do I want to go into a profession where there’s gonna be a lot of churn and a lot of change?…

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