*When you think of AI, think of humanity too*
This was the main message of the GStar Summit on AI & Humanity that I organized two days ago (as a breather after Google I/O). For a long time, I was deeply focused on advancing model capabilities toward superhuman reasoning, and I found immense joy when we accomplished our goal, e.g., our IMO-gold milestone in July 2025. I always assumed that someone, somewhere, would just take care of the social impact side for me.
It really hit me in Feb 2026 when our math research agent, Aletheia, solved FirstProof problem #7 by flawlessly utilizing heavy mathematical machinery, as noted by our surprised mathematicians. I started to wonder: what's left for humanity?
Discussing human values with my wife, Wendy Nguyen, and our dear friend Jean DeSombre, I realized I hadn't been thinking much about humanity while actively charting the course of frontier AI. But as our conversations continued over the past few months, I noticed myself becoming more "humanity-aware."
For example, during a team lunch at Google DeepMind, we were chatting about what we would do after we "solved" AI for math. I heard a number of suggestions, e.g., robotics or world models, but nothing explicitly centered on humanity. I told the team that we need to think about empowering humans: one way is to build a model capable of asking questions, from basic paraphrasing all the way to forming conjectures, which would be incredibly useful for both education and model training!
At GStar Summit 2026, aside from the deep dives into agentic AI with @edchi, @YiTayML, @preslav_nakov, Phong Nguyen, Myungsub Choi, Noriyuki Kojima, and Hung Bui, we dedicated half of the summit to talking about humanity!
@PoShenLoh, awesome as always, proposed the "Thought+Full" philosophy and reminded us how people find joy in helping others. Jay Kim shared with us new perspectives about human health in space, showing that space is not that scary to be a part of. Together with other speakers and panelist, Wendy Nguyen, Jean DeSombre, Marc Woo, Laurent El Ghaoui, Tuong Nguyen, Tuoc Huynh, Tuan Cao, and @CurtisSChin, we discussed all aspects of humanity in the age of AI.
Our hope is that everyone who walked out of the summit can now find joy in talking and working with each other on human values (either before or after AI)!
Thanks to everyone for coming from all over Asia Pacific and Silicon Valley! Many people told me that it's very rare in Vietnam for people to stay from 8am - 6pm with a fully-packed hall of 1,000+ people!
See you again soon!
