quotations about artificial intelligence
Consider what it means to teach an autonomous robot to do something as simple as mowing grass. First, you take a long wire and lay it carefully around the borders of your lawn. Then you can set your mower loose. It doesn't know or care what a lawn is, or what mowing means: it will simply criss-cross the area bound by the wire until it has covered all the ground. You have successfully adapted an environment -- your lawn -- into something a machine understands.
TOM CHATFIELD
"How much should we fear the rise of artificial intelligence?", The Guardian, March 18, 2016
If [Elon] Musk is the Cassandra of artificial intelligence -- a pooh-poohed prophet, helplessly predicting the destruction of proverbial Troy -- many scientists, in contrast, appear more than happy to wave in AI's gleaming, giant horse. Right now, our friends at the Pentagon are reportedly piecing together a battalion of fighting robots. Ray Kurzweil, an author and futurist who has long and enthusiastically predicted the ultimate merger of man and machine, now works as a director of engineering at Google -- a company, as the Guardian reports, that is diligently "working on an artificial intelligence similar to those portrayed in movies." Sounds great, until you remember that many of those movies are actually kind of scary. One exception -- and perhaps an early indicator of humanity's growing acceptance of our nascent robot overlords -- was 2013's Her, an AI drama that features a lonely, sensitive Joaquin Phoenix falling in love with a whip-smart computer operating system, voiced by the sultry Scarlett Johansson.
HEATHER WILHELM
"Should Humans Fear Artificial Intelligence", Dallas Morning News, Nov. 28, 2014
Whether sophisticated AI turns out to be friend or foe, we must come to grips with the possibility that as we move further into the 21st century, the greatest intelligence on the planet may be silicon-based.
SUSAN SCHNEIDER
"The Problem of AI Consciousness", Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence, March 18, 2016
One can imagine such technology outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand. Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all.
STEPHEN HAWKING
"Transcendence looks at the implications of artificial intelligence -- but are we taking AI seriously enough?", The Independent, May 1, 2014
Although I'm not prepared to move up my prediction of a computer passing the Turing test by 2029, the progress that has been achieved in systems like Watson should give anyone substantial confidence that the advent of Turing-level AI is close at hand. If one were to create a version of Watson that was optimized for the Turing test, it would probably come pretty close.
RAY KURZWEIL
How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed
If Artificial Intelligence really has little to do with computer technology and much more to do with abstract principles of mental organization, then the distinctions among AI, psychology, and even philosophy of mind seem to melt away. One can study those basic principles using tools and techniques from computer science, or with the methods of experimental psychology, or in traditional philosophical terms--but it's the same subject in each case. Thus a grand interdisciplinary marriage seems imminent; indeed, a number of enthusiasts have already taken the vows. For their new "unified" field, they have coined the name cognitive science. If you believe the advertisements, Artificial Intelligence and psychology, as well as parts of philosophy, linguistics, and anthropology, are now just "subspecialties" within one coherent study of cognition, intelligence, and mind--that is, of symbol manipulation.
JOHN C. HAUGELAND
Artificial Intelligence: The Very Idea
Google's work in artificial intelligence ... includes deep neural networks, networks of hardware and software that approximate the web of neurons in the human brain. By analyzing vast amounts of digital data, these neural nets can learn all sorts of useful tasks, like identifying photos, recognizing commands spoken into a smartphone, and, as it turns out, responding to Internet search queries. In some cases, they can learn a task so well that they outperform humans. They can do it better. They can do it faster. And they can do it at a much larger scale.
CADE METZ
"AI is transforming Google Search -- The rest of the Web is next", Wired, February 4, 2016
Can we design AI systems whose goals do not conflict with ours so that we are sure to be happy with they way they behave? This is far from easy -- after all, stories with a genie and three wishes often end with a third wish to undo the first two.
STUART RUSSELL
"Should We Fear Supersmart Robots?", Scientific American, June 2016
If there is a way of guaranteeing that superior artificial intellects will never harm human beings, then such intellects will be created. If there is no way to have such a guarantee, then they will probably be created nevertheless.
NICK BOSTROM
attributed, "The superhero of artificial intelligence: can this genius keep it in check?", The Guardian, February 16, 2016
In order to maximize positive outcomes, organizations should hire ethicists who work with corporate decisionmakers and software developers, have a code of AI ethics that lays out how various issues will be handled, organize an AI review board that regularly addresses corporate ethical questions, have AI audit trails that show how various coding decisions have been made, implement AI training programs so staff operationalizes ethical considerations in their daily work, and provide a means for remediation when AI solutions inflict harm or damages on people or organizations.
DARRELL M. WEST
"What is artificial intelligence?", Brookings Institution, October 4, 2018
When people talk about the future of technology, especially artificial intelligence, they very often have the common dystopian Hollywood-movie model of us versus the machines. My view is that we will use these tools as we've used all other tools--to broaden our reach. And in this case, we'll be extending the most important attribute we have, which is our intelligence.
RAY KURZWEIL
"Reinvent Yourself", Playboy, April 19, 2016
The key issue as to whether or not a non-biological entity deserves rights really comes down to whether or not it's conscious.... Does it have feelings?
RAY KURZWEIL
USA Today, Aug. 19, 2007
Artificial Intelligence is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it allows us to create intelligent artifacts with human-like perception and cognition. On the other hand, it accelerates people's heavy dependence on artifacts.
MAX BRAMER
Artificial Intelligence: An International Perspective
This is just the beginning as AI becomes a new member of the team. And visionary HR leaders will increasingly consider chatbots another co-worker, helping to orient and train them, and assisting the rest of the team in understanding how to work with them. The end result will be more time for employees to do what makes them uniquely human such as: complex problem solving, critical thinking, and creativity, the top three skills deemed essential By the World Economic Forum.
JEANNE MEISTER
"AI Plus Human Intelligence Is The Future Of Work", Forbes, January 11, 2018
Sci-fi loves to depict military AIs as malign killer minds or robots. But the truth is more subtle and more terrifying -- and it's happening right now.
KENNETH PAYNE
"Artificial intelligence is about to revolutionise warfare. Be afraid", New Scientist, September 12, 2018
Technology and artificial intelligence (AI) are fashioning how people interact with everything from food to healthcare -- and so, too, for religion. From electronic scriptures to robot priests, different faiths have absorbed new ideas from the world of technology to enhance mainstream religious practices.
SHAFI MUSADDIQUE
"How artificial intelligence is shaping religion in the 21st century", CNBC, May 11, 2018
The rise of smart machines is unlike any other technological revolution because what is ultimately at stake here is the very idea of humanness -- we may be on the verge of creating a new life form, one that could mark not only an evolutionary breakthrough, but a potential threat to our survival as a species.
JEFF GOODELL
"Inside the Artificial Intelligence Revolution: A Special Report, Pt. 1", Rolling Stone, February 29, 2016
Making AI safe for humanity may turn out to be the same as making our society safe for humanity.
JOSCHA BACH
"Exploring the risks of artificial intelligence", Tech Crunch, March 21, 2016
AI is already part of the operations within many companies we interact with every day, from Apple's Siri to how Uber dispatches drivers to the way Facebook arranges its Newsfeed. In fact, Facebook is making research into AI a priority, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently stating that one of his goals this year is to "code" a personal assistant to "help run his life."
JULIA BOORSTIN
"It's too late! Artificial intelligence is already everywhere", CNBC, January 26, 2016
Human beings, viewed as behaving systems, are quite simple. The apparent complexity of our behavior over time is largely a reflection of the complexity of the environment in which we find ourselves.
HERBERT A. SIMON
The Sciences of the Artificial