Artificial intelligence is front of mind for many of us, in our workplaces, schools and even in day-to-day activities.

It’s being touted as a labor-saving tool, a quick way to analyse information and the way to get answers to almost any question we can think of.

But, it still needs to be kept in check, as David Gerhard, Head of Computer Sciences at the University of Manitoba explains.

“The accuracy of anything that comes from A-I is something we need to be careful of because one of the reasons A-I is good at language tasks and creative tasks is because it makes maybe unusual connections between ideas but that means it can get things wrong and it will continue to get things wrong. So we always want to have human validation in anything that A-I does.”

Gerhard adds that as A-I models “train” on available data, the accuracy or inaccuracy of that data shapes its responses.

He says it not only trains on published, well-established information, it also includes conversations that could be skewed in a particular direction or inaccurate.

Hear more about artificial intelligence and its pros and cons. Catch Thompson Today this afternoon at 12:40 and 5:10.