Abstract

The AI revolution has consistently outpaced even the boldest expectations. From the game-changing AlexNet breakthrough in 2012 to the transformative debut of the Transformer architecture in 2017, and the astonishing arrival of ChatGPT in 2022, each milestone has redefined the boundaries of possibility. Today, the landscape is brimming with multimodal AI agents and a flood of innovative AI products and assistants, unveiled in rapid succession by competing tech companies. This relentless progress compels us to continually recalibrate our vision for a future shaped by AI.

This seminar embarks on a journey through AI’s evolution, with a spotlight on the last ten years’ seismic shifts. We’ll dissect how foundational deep learning has rocked industries, with particular attention to the advent of large language models that have given birth to versatile AI agents. We’ll survey the vast expanse of AI products, examining how they’re not just reshaping markets and the whole industry, but also driving demand for specialized hardware such as GPUs, AI-accelerators, and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips.

The discussion will pivot to the dual nature of AI—its immense promise and its inherent peril. We’ll explore how to protect humanity from AI’s potential risks, both visible and hidden, while embracing its transformative potential to the fullest. Drawing on my insights and firsthand experience as a KFAS-Salzburg Global Leadership Initiative Fellow, I will present actionable strategies to empower humanity and navigate an AI-enriched future with wisdom and resilience.

To add some spice, supplementary materials in the appendices will provoke thought with questions about the serendipities (or perhaps inevitabilities) of AI’s development. We’ll also grapple with the deeper mysteries of AI, like what makes deep learning so adept at navigating the labyrinth of complex data representations, to more philosophical conundrums about AI’s consciousness, knowledge, belief systems, and reasoning abilities.