{"id":13670,"date":"2015-03-09T03:00:05","date_gmt":"2015-03-09T10:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/?p=13670"},"modified":"2017-04-25T04:07:07","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T11:07:07","slug":"striking-the-balance-on-artificial-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2015\/03\/striking-the-balance-on-artificial-intelligence","title":{"rendered":"Striking the Balance on Artificial Intelligence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/authors.cecilia_tilli.html\" rel=\"author\">Cecilia Tilli<\/a> \u2014 Slate<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div class=\"text text-1 parbase section\">In January, I joined Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Lord Martin Rees, and other artificial intelligence researchers, policymakers, and entrepreneurs in signing an open <a href=\"http:\/\/futureoflife.org\/misc\/open_letter\" target=\"_blank\">letter<\/a> asking for a change in <a href=\"http:\/\/futureoflife.org\/static\/data\/documents\/research_priorities.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">A.I. research priorities<\/a><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">. <\/span>The letter was the product of a <a href=\"http:\/\/futureoflife.org\/misc\/ai_conference\" target=\"_blank\">four-day conference<\/a> (held in Puerto Rico in January), and it makes three claims:<\/div>\n<div class=\"text-2 text parbase section\">\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Current A.I. research seeks to develop intelligent agents.<\/strong> The foremost goal of research is to construct systems that perceive and act in a particular environment at (or above) human level.<\/li>\n<li><strong>A.I. research is advancing very quickly and has great potential to benefit humanity.<\/strong> Fast and steady progress in A.I. forecasts a growing impact on society. The potential benefits are unprecedented, so emphasis should be on developing \u201cuseful A.I.,\u201d rather than simply improving capacity.<\/li>\n<li><strong>With great power comes great responsibility.<\/strong> A.I. has great potential to help humanity but it can also be extremely damaging. Hence, great care is needed in reaping its benefits while avoiding potential pitfalls.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"text-3 text parbase section\">\n<p>In response to the release of this letter (which anyone can now sign and has been endorsed by more than 6,000 people), news organizations published articles with headlines like:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"text parbase text-4 section\">\n<p>\u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/mashable.com\/2015\/01\/13\/elon-musk-stephen-hawking-artificial-intelligence\/\" target=\"_blank\">Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking Warn of Artificial Intelligence Dangers<\/a>.\u201d \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.livescience.com\/49419-artificial-intelligence-dangers-letter.html\" target=\"_blank\">Don\u2019t Let Artificial Intelligence Take Over, Top Scientists Warn<\/a>.\u201d \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/mg22530044.000-big-science-names-sign-open-letter-detailing-ai-danger.html#.VO9Z5XY8rBI\" target=\"_blank\">Big Science Names Sign Open Letter Detailing AI Danger<\/a>.\u201d \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/2015\/01\/ai-arrived-really-worries-worlds-brightest-minds\/\" target=\"_blank\">AI Has Arrived, and That Really Worries the World\u2019s Brightest Minds<\/a>.\u201d<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/technology\/future_tense\/2015\/03\/elon_musk_stephen_hawking_artificial_intelligence_the_state_of_a_i_research.html\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Cecilia Tilli \u2014 Slate In January, I joined Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Lord Martin Rees, and other artificial intelligence researchers, policymakers, and entrepreneurs in signing an open letter asking for a change in A.I. research priorities. The letter was the product of a four-day conference (held in Puerto Rico in January), and it makes [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13670"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46587,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13670\/revisions\/46587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}