AI Answers: CMU’s Rayid Ghani Testifies to Senate Committee
On Thursday, Carnegie Mellon University's Rayid Ghani testified as a witness during the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing entitled " Governing AI Through Acquisition and Procurement. " Ghani, who graduated from Carnegie Mellon in 2001, is a Distinguished Career Professor in CMU's Machine Learning Department and the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy. Ghani served as chief scientist for the Obama for America 2012 election campaign and joined the CMU faculty in 2019. He started the Data Science for Social Good Fellowship to train computer scientists, statisticians and social scientists to use data on problems with social impact. Before his trip to Washington, Ghani sat down to discuss recent AI advancements. The following has been edited and condensed. Q: What AI is and how is it being used? : Think of AI as a set of tools to help us make better decisions. It's being used in a lot of aspects of society, ranging from companies using it to show us ads, sell us things, recommend movies - to self-driving cars. But governments and nonprofits are using it in similar ways: to help improve society, to help us improve public health services that we're provided or improve employment opportunities; and skilling people, or improving educational outcomes and criminal justice outcomes - often to be more preventative than reactive. Q: What are some of the general concerns you've heard from the public about the use of AI?
