Tech giants' goal:
Protect us, our jobs from robots
Amazon,
Facebook, Google, IBM And Microsoft Unite To Ease Public Fear Of Machines
Five
major technology com panies have created an or ganization to set the gro und
rules for protecting humans -and their jobs -in the face of rapid advances in
artificial intelligence. The Partnership on AI, unites Amazon, Facebook,
Google, IBM and Microsoft in an effort to ease public fears of machines that
are learning to think for themselves and perhaps ease corporate anxiety over
the prospect of government regulation of this new technology .
The
organization has been created at a time of significant public debate about
artificial intelligence technologies that are built into a variety of ro bots
and other intelligent systems, including self-driving cars and workplace
automation. The industry group introduced a set of basic ethical standards for
engineering development and scientific research that its five members have
agreed upon.
In a
conference call on Wednesday , five artificial intelligence researchers
representing the companies said they thought the technology would be a major
force in the world for social and economic benefits, but they acknowledged the
potential for misuse in a wide variety of ways.
They said
their effort was not intended to be an enforcement organization to force
technology companies into self-regulation. Rather, they want to foster “public
understanding“ and set “best practices“ for work in artificial intelligence.
“We passionately believe in the potential for it to transform in a positive way
our world,“ said Mustafa Suleyman, head of applied AI for DeepMind, an
artificial intelligence development company acquired by Google in 2014.“We
believe it's critical now to start to think about new models of engagement with
the public, new models of collaboration across the industry and new models of
transparency around the work that we do.“
The group
released eight tenets that are evocative of Isaac Asimov's original “Three Laws
of Robotics,“ which appeared in a science fiction story in 1942. The new
principles include high-level ideals such as, “We will seek to ensure that AI
technologies benefit and empower as many people as possible.“
Nevertheless,
at least one of the tenets implies that the companies realize they could be
drawn into sticky ethical situations, and it calls on engineers to oppose the
use of artificial intelligence technology in weapons or other tools that could
be used to violate human rights.
“With the
hyperbole about AI over the last two to four years, there have been concerns in
an echo chamber of anxiety that the government itself will be misinformed,“
said Eric Horvitz, managing director for Microsoft Research. The researchers
said they were talking with other companies like Apple and research
laboratories like a nonprofit research group OpenAI about participating in
their organization.
(toi)
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