Norman M. Johnston

Announcing a Benchmark to Improve AI Safety MLCommons has made benchmarks for AI performance—now it’s time to measure safety

By Norman M. Johnston March 17, 2024

One of the management guru Peter Drucker’s most over-quoted turns of phrase is “what gets measured gets improved.” But it’s over-quoted for a reason: It’s true. Nowhere is it truer than…

Experiment finds AI boosts creativity individually — but lowers it collectively

By Norman M. Johnston January 4, 2024

A new study examines whether AI could be an automated helpmeet in creative tasks, with mixed results: It appeared to help less naturally creative people write more original short stories…

AI Coding Is Going From Copilot to Autopilot But so far Devin AI and others still really need humans

By Norman M. Johnston September 3, 2023

A new breed of AI-powered coding tools have emerged—and they’re claiming to be more autonomous versions of earlier assistants like GitHub Copilot, Amazon CodeWhisperer, and Tabnine. One such new entrant, Devin AI, has been dubbed an…

What Can AI Researchers Learn From Alien Hunters? The SETI Institute’s approach has lessons for research on artificial general intelligence

By Norman M. Johnston July 22, 2023

The emergence of artificial general intelligence (AGI)—systems that can perform any task a human can—could be the most important event in human history, one that radically affects all aspects of…

AI and Big Data

By Norman M. Johnston November 25, 2022

In general terms, AI refers to computational tools that are able to substitute for human intelligence in the performance of certain tasks. This technology is currently advancing at a breakneck…