“The day will come when AI will do all of the things that we can do not just some of them but all of them… the challenge that AI poses, in some sense, is the greatest challenge of humanity ever and overcoming it will also bring the greatest reward, and in some sense, whether you like it or not, your life is going to be affected by AI to a great extent.” — Ilya Sutskever
From co-authoring seminal research papers to co-founding the research organization that developed ChatGPT, few people have been as influential in shaping the artificial intelligence landscape – and conversations around the technology’s responsible use – as Ilya Sutskever. As a University of Toronto graduate student, Sutskever co-authored one of the most cited academic papers of this century and has since played a central role in driving the development and adoption of a technology that is transforming the economy, society and people’s everyday lives. Today, for his foundational work and global impact as a computer scientist and artificial intelligence (AI) visionary, and for his outstanding service as an advocate of safe and responsible AI, Sutskever will receive a Doctor of Science, honoris causa, from U of T.
okay hi everyone it’s really nice to be here i want to thank everyone for setting this up for organizing this for giving me this honorary degree it’s actually extremely meaningful to receive this honorary degree almost to this day 20 years ago I received my bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto in this exact hall and actually and actually at this point now I have this would be my fourth degree from the University of Toronto and and I had a really extremely wonderful time here i spent a total of 10 years i did my undergrad degree and I learned a lot and I was also a graduate student here and it was really wonderful i was able to go deep in my whatever I was interested in and to really become a researcher it was really wonderful to study with Jeff Hinton actually the fact that Jeff Hinton was in this university was one of my life’s great strokes of luck and and I feel a lot of gratitude to the university i feel like I feel like I couldn’t have asked for a better way to you know become educated mature become a scientist and also the University of Toronto when I was a student here we were doing the best AI research out of anywhere was the most revolutionary ideas the most exciting work and and I feel very lucky that I was able to contribute to it already you know in in grad school as a student but that was a long time ago and the way I understand it in a convocation speech one is supposed to provide sagacious advice and I’ll do a little bit of that but only a bit because this one will this uh speech will be a little bit different you know the I will I will offer one bit of um a useful state of mind which if one adopts it makes everything much easier which is to accept reality as it is and to try not to regret the past and try to improve the situation and the reason I say it is because it’s so hard to adopt it it’s so easy to think oh like some bad past decision or bad stroke of luck something happened something is unfair and you can just spend it’s so easy to spend so much time thinking like this while it’s just so much better and more productive to say okay things are the way they are what’s the next best step and I find that whenever I do this myself everything works out so much better but it’s hard it’s hard it’s it’s a constant struggle with one’s emotion and that’s why I mention it to you perhaps some of you will adopt it yourself this is a reminder to adopt this mindset as best as one can and also a reminder for myself constant struggle but this this aside the reason it’s not going to be the most conventional convocation speech is because there is something a little different going on right now you all leave we all leave in the most unusual time ever and this is something that people might say often but I think it’s actually true this time and the reason it’s true this time is because of AI right obviously I mean from what I hear the AI of today has already changed what it means to be a student by a pretty considerable degree that’s I uh especially I that’s what I I sense and I think it’s true but of course the impact of AI goes beyond that what happens to the kind of work we do well it’s starting to change a little bit in some unknown and unpredictable ways and some some some work may feel it sooner some work might feel it later with today’s AI you can go on on uh on Twitter and you can look at what AI can do and what people say and you might feel a little bit of that you wonder hey which skills are useful which ones will be less useful so you got these questions going on and so you can say that the current level of challenge is how will it affect work and our careers but the thing the real challenge with AI is that is really unprecedented and really extreme and it’s going to be very different in the future compared to the way it is today like you know we’ve all seen AI we’ve all spoken to a computer and a computer has spoken back to us which is a new thing computers would not do this in the past but now they do so you speak to a computer then it understands you and it speaks back to you and it also does it in voice and it writes some code it’s it’s pretty crazy but there are so many things it cannot do as well and it’s so deficient so you can say it still needs to catch up on a lot of things but it’s evocative it’s good enough that you can ask yourself you could imagine okay fine in some number of years some people say it’s in three some people say it’s in five 10 numbers are being thrown around it’s a bit hard to predict the future but slowly but surely or maybe not so slowly AI will keep getting better and the day will come when AI will do all of our all the things that we can do not just some of them but all of them anything which I can learn anything which any any one of you can learn the AI could do as well how do we know this by the way how can I be so sure how can I be so sure of that the reason is that all of us have a brain and the brain is a biological computer that’s why we have a brain the brain is a biological computer so why can’t the digital computer a digital brain do the same things this is the one sentence summary for why AI will be able to do all those things because we have a brain and the brain is a biological computer and so you can start asking yourselves what’s going to happen what’s going to happen when computers can do all of our jobs right those are really big questions those are dramatic questions and right now like you start thinking about it a little bit you go gosh that’s a little intense but it’s actually only part of the intensity because what’s going to happen what what will we the collective V want to use these AIs for do more work grow the economy do R&D do AI research so then the rate of progress will become really extremely fast for some time at least these are such extreme things these are such unimaginable things so right now I’m trying to pull you into that a little bit into this headsp space of this really extreme and radical future that the AI creates but it’s also very difficult to imagine it’s very very difficult to imagine it’s very difficult to internalize and to really believe on an emotional level even I struggle with it and yet the logic seems to dictate that this very likely should happen so what does one do in such a world you know there is a quote which is like this uh uh which goes like this it says you may not take interest in politics but politics will take interest in you so the same applies to AI many times over and in particular I think that by simply using AI and looking at what the best AI of today can do you get an intuition you get an intuition and as AI continues to improve in one year in two years in three years the intuition will become stronger and a lot of the things that we are talking about now they will become much more real they’ll become less imaginary in the end of the day no amount of essays and and explanations can can compete with what we see with our own senses with our own two eyes and especially with AI the very smart super intelligent AI in the future there will be very profound issues about making sure that they are they say what they say and not pretend to be something else and I’m really condensing a lot into a small amount of information here in time here but overall by simply looking at what AI can do not ignoring it when the time comes that will generate the energy that’s required to overcome the huge challenge that AI will pose and the challenge that AI poses in some sense is the greatest challenge of humanity ever and overcoming it will also have the will also bring the greatest reward and in some sense whether you like it or not your life is going to be affected by AI to a great extent and so looking at it paying attention and then generating the energy to solve the problems that will come up that’s going to be the main thing and I’ll stop here thank you so much