On Jan. 22, Dr. John T. Sherill and Michael J. Salvo spoke at the Van Pelt and Opie Library about their new book, “Artificial Infrastructures.” Their book, which was published with open access last July, captures the emergence of generative artificial intelligence by following three interviews with industry professionals.
During the author talk, Salvo was not present, but was able to share his thoughts about their book virtually. According to Salvo, one of the reasons for writing “Artificial Infrastructures” was to “capture the snapshot of the moment as AI was emerging.” Another focus during this event was to distinguish the difference between traditional and generative AI. Traditional AI is trained on lots of data that has been labeled by humans. Some examples include imaging software in medical settings or pattern and facial recognition software. Generative AI is generating new content to fit some sort of constraint and, according to Sherill, “is not very good at matching patterns.”
The two co-authors also went into detail about the three individuals they interviewed in the book and how they use AI in different ways. The first individual worked for a large stock content company, and focused on the ethics of training data for AI. Another individual worked for McAfee and was managing writing teams while using AI. The final individual “was a bit of an outlier with over 30 years of experience.” Salvo emphasised this because, unlike the other two interviewees, this individual was working at Labcorp, a medical testing and supply company which was using AI to streamline production.
The author talk gave students and staff great insight into the emerging field of AI and how it can be utilized in different ways. For more information about the book, you can find “Artificial Infrastructures” online on Google with open access in PDF format, or contact Dr. Sherrill with any questions about the book at his email, jtsherri@mtu.edu.
