But observers warn that there are several factors that could stymie the nation’s plans, including a lack of contribution to the theories used to develop the tools underpinning the field, and a reticence by Chinese companies to invest in the research needed to make fundamental breakthroughs.
The country’s artificial-intelligence research is growing in quality, but the field still plays catch up to the United States in terms of high-impact papers, people and ethics.
We need to have higher ethics for robotic beings because if the superintelligence in digital form becomes reality we will need to have better ethics around robot rights. We could have literally a terminator situation but we could make a the vision possibly we do not need to have them be slaves to use but rightful citizens.
Each notice cited the same section of these guidelines, which states: “Content that displays the deliberate infliction of animal suffering or the forcing of animals to fight is not allowed on YouTube.”
It goes on to state: “Examples include, but are not limited to, dog fighting and cock fighting.”
An AI system introduced in 2015 with much fanfare in the U.S. failed to recognise faces of African Americans with the same accuracy as those of Caucasian Americans. | Photo Credit: AP
Seventy-five people filed into a Washington State Convention Center meeting room Wednesday to hear about the latest advancements in artificial intelligence. In a pitching session reminiscent of a speed-dating event, about 10 Northwest startups hurriedly shared their accomplishments and aspirations with Japanese investors eager to stoke business relationships.
Master of ceremonies Tom Sato, co-founder of Kirkland-based investing firm Innovation Finders Capital, lightened the mood by cracking jokes as he translated the English-speaking founders’ business plans into Japanese, cautioning the attendees that he faced a challenge: “I have to understand what the hell they’re talking about.”
The A.I. Age | This 12-month series of stories explores the social and economic questions arising from the fast-spreading uses of artificial intelligence. The series is funded with the help of the Harvard-MIT Ethics and Governance of AI Initiative. Seattle Times editors and reporters operate independently of our funders and maintain editorial control over the coverage.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an emerging field of computer programming that is already changing the way we interact online and in real life, but the term ‘intelligence’ has been poorly defined. Rather than focusing on smarts, researchers should be looking at the implications and viability of artificial consciousness as that’s the real driver behind intelligent decisions.
Consciousness rather than intelligence should be the true measure of AI. At the moment, despite all our efforts, there’s none.
Significant advances have been made in the field of AI over the past decade, in particular with machine learning, but artificial intelligence itself remains elusive. Instead, what we have is artificial serfs—computers with the ability to trawl through billions of interactions and arrive at conclusions, exposing trends and providing recommendations, but they’re blind to any real intelligence. What’s needed is artificial awareness.
Elon Musk has called AI the “biggest existential threat” facing humanity and likened it to “summoning a demon,”[1] while Stephen Hawking thought it would be the “worst event” in the history of civilization and could “end with humans being replaced.”[2] Although this sounds alarmist, like something from a science fiction movie, both concerns are founded on a well-established scientific premise found in biology—the principle of competitive exclusion.[3]
There are certainly ways to use AI to reduce the collateral damage and harms of war, but fully autonomous weapons would also usher in a host of new moral, technical, and strategic dilemmas, which is why scientists and activists have pushed the United Nations and world governments to consider a preemptive ban. Their hope is that we can keep killer robots in the realm of science fiction.
We have the technology to make robots that kill without oversight. But should we?
