AI winter is coming?
The history of artificial intelligence (AI) has been a history of boom and bust. Periods of hype, exaggerated expectations and plentiful funding have been followed by periods known as “AI Winters”…
Ethical Crashing and Safety Requirements of Autonomous Vehicles
The ethical discussion of autonomous vehicles has been fairly one-sided. It has focused on how vehicles should behave in case of an unavoidable crash and how is responsible if the vehicle crashes. But why don’t we talk about safety?
Voice assistants become Choice assistants?
In Homer’s epic poem, as Ulysses heads home, Circe suggests that he plug his ears. Otherwise, the Sirens’ song would lure him to steer his ship towards rocks and shipwreck. Ulysses asks his crew to plug their ears and tie him to the ship’s mast. When he passes the Sirens, he asks his crew to release him, but they refuse and the ship sails on…
AI risks and do we have to care about the implausible?
Granted the current technological development of AI, the evaluation of risks of AI are highly relevant. Some proponents of AI safety have suggested elaborate scenarios of AI risks [1], which strikes others as implausible and hence—or so they argue—ought to be ignored [2]. Thus, the question of how much attention we should give to implausible scenarios is a highly relevant issue to resolve. Interestingly, there […]
Diffusion by Infusion – Has AI Spread by Piggybacking on Mobile Apps?
Social and ethical impacts of any technology presuppose its diffusion. That is why we need to understand the mechanisms underlying the spread of AI. This post summarizes a recent study of…
The Binge-Watching Problem
It is a quarter to midnight on a Tuesday and you are asking your virtual voice assistant to stream the next episode. Seems an easy task for an AI. The catch is that last week you asked…
An AI system does not always do as we intended
In a lecture in 1951 Alan Turing offered several ideas that foreshadowed much of cutting-edge AI safety discussion of the early 21st…
Political views of leaders of AI companies
It is often said that “with great power comes great responsibility.” Many leaders of corporations at the forefront of artificial intelligence recognize this. For example, the CEO of Genpact says that companies need to reduce racial and…
Was AlphaGo Asia’s “Sputnik Moment”?
Over the next decade, many governments will face a series of choices with regards to the deployment and regulation of machine learning technology. These choices are likely to be influenced by public opinion and interest in this technology.
Political views of employees of AI companies
In the debate about artificial intelligence, there is the argument that it is virtually impossible for policymakers to understand the complex nature of AI, let alone to regulate it efficiently, timely, and properly. Instead, more…