AI is not a cure-all: Professor Dennis Hong

Dennis Hong, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCLA and director of RoMeLa

Dennis Hong, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and director of Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa) is calling for a pivot in artificial intelligence (AI) to focus on what it cannot do to survive in the AI era.

“In the age of AI, we need to focus on what only humans can do,” Hong said in a recent interview with Maeil Business Newspaper. Hong has created nearly 50 types of pioneering robots and was earlier named the “the Leonardo da Vinci of robots” by Washington Post.

Two years ago, AI or robots could not rival human creativity, but now AI can make music and draw beautiful pictures, according to Hong. “There are many types of creativity,” he said, emphasizing that the focus should be on what humans alone are capable of. “The creativity needed to focus on a problem and solve it is something that AI cannot do,” and there are researchers who believe that machine learning is facing its limits.

Hong stressed that while AI is important, it is not a cure-all, meaning that its excellence depends on the domain. For example, Hong’s research team developed ARTEMIS, a robot that operates in a mathematical way, and BALLU, a robot that utilizes machine learning. “ARTEMIS is capable of doing parkour (a form of gymnastics), but we have only unveiled 40 percent of its capacity, and it is driven by a mathematical algorithm,” he said. “BALLU, a ballon-bodied robot, walks 24 hours a day guided by a balloon and collects data, and it works with machine learning as every movement is unpredictable.” He explained that AI is meant for different areas depending on the purpose of use.

Hong also cautioned against undue pessimism or excessive optimism about the emergence of artificial general intelligence (AGI), an ideal AI that can understand, learn, and apply knowledge across a wide range of tasks and domains. He also quoted Professor Andrew Ng in saying that worrying about the rise of AGI is like worrying about population growth on Mars, calling on humanity to focus on the issues it faces, such as human rights, the environment, and global warming, instead.

The professor also stressed a balanced view on recent technologies, saying “They are intelligent machines that make our lives easier, so we will develop solutions to the problems around us without being overly anxious.”