# Timothy Timothy (Co-Founder and Managing Director of the AI Launch Lab; member of the AI Advisory Board at Dawson College) was a guest on AI with Sach, a podcast hosted by Sacha Gucciardo in Montréal. ## Episode 6: Democratizing AI Education: A Conversation with Timothy from the AI Launch Lab (August 2024) Timothy of the AI Launch Lab on training college students in AI through real projects, who gets shut out of the field, and why AI's current harms matter more than AGI. Page: https://aiwithsach.com/episodes/06-democratizing-ai-education-a-conversation-with-tim/ > I think a lot of it is, um, not worth thinking and talking about because it's not relevant to what, what work needs to be done now. It's not relevant to the harms and the risks that exist today. Um, so I'm a big believer in focusing on like current harms and risks versus future harms that may or may not happen. > — at 41:54 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLdihbA-D2g&t=2514s) > just don't think that we're getting those hours back. You know, the idea that we're all going to be like sitting and lounging while AI, AI is doing the work for us, I think is nonsensical. > — at 43:56 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLdihbA-D2g&t=2636s) > the idea that we have of Luddites is that they were like anti-technology. And, and actually a lot of what they were was not anti-technology, but anti how technology was beginning to be used by factory owners. > — at 45:09 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLdihbA-D2g&t=2709s) > Almost everyone is like, oh, it's an executive or a C it's a CEO from big tech. Right. It's like, these are the people who are in, in the rooms. Like it's not, it's not like somebody who got discriminated against and didn't get like the credit card offer that their husband got. > — at 57:47 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLdihbA-D2g&t=3467s) > even if you're like, I don't want to work on AI projects or I don't want to use AI tools, like we need to have people involved who have domain experience. We need to have people who have different perspectives. > — at 1:00:44 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLdihbA-D2g&t=3644s) > last year, I'd say it took maybe a day and a half, you know, of course, some exceptions, but a day and a half for students to really get their data together and to get it to be usable, to kind of process it and clean it. This year, by using LLMs to help do that work, it was maybe a few hours to get to that level. > — at 7:53 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLdihbA-D2g&t=473s) > there's actually historically been this counter position to that, which is that actually you want everyone to have to think similarly so that you're all rowing in the same direction. > — at 20:33 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLdihbA-D2g&t=1233s) > there's so many things that fall by the wayside. I mean, all the ethics people being fired, you know, from companies and, um, at some point, I think that will kind of swing back the other way. > — at 36:54 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLdihbA-D2g&t=2214s) > I am a little bit partial to the idea that a lot of the talk about AGI is a bunch of people who have been in this field for, for years and now people who have not been, you know, for decades and, and who have been obsessed in their little circle talking about what's going to happen when the singularity comes. > — at 40:56 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLdihbA-D2g&t=2456s) > I think it's like, you need to race to get to the top of an organization as fast as possible before the, the lower levels just get stripped away. And this is kind of how I was feeling about finance, like years ago when I went back to school > — at 47:37 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLdihbA-D2g&t=2857s) > I don't know what the solution is because the economic imperative to use these things is far too high and governments can come in and try to like mitigate harm. But like the status quo is like, don't constrain us because if you constrain us, China's win or, or whatever, whatever the rationale is. > — at 54:51 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLdihbA-D2g&t=3291s) > I think AI can be a catalyst for positive change. Uh, I don't think we're anywhere near that right now, unfortunately, but I think we can push for that. > — at 58:14 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLdihbA-D2g&t=3494s) > the idea of like, oh, I'm learning, you know, and I'm not getting paid to do this work. And, you know, is there a sort of exploitation coming out of that? So for us, you know, we always had to make sure, like, look, the value has to be there for the student first and foremost. > — at 13:15 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLdihbA-D2g&t=795s)