The proponents of artificial intelligence make it clear that as the technology speeds ahead, a much larger dialogue outside of the immediate community of technologists, engineers and tech theorists must take place, so that all of society can reap its apparent benefits.
But, how?
How can we assure that wide swaths of society will be heard? Who is to determine the path that artificial intelligence, or AI, and machine learning ultimately will take? When proponents ask such major questions publicly, they inevitably agree that the course of AI shouldn't be set simply by those who directly profit from it (or the machines themselves!), but that the course of AI should be set by all of society.
But, again, how? The need for an answer is now very much upon us, AI proponents say.
"What will the role of humans be, if machines can do everything better and cheaper than us?" asked Max Tegmark, a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. He was speaking at the Beyond Impact summit on artificial intelligence Friday at The Globe and Mail in Toronto, presented in conjunction with the University of Waterloo.
The assumption in such questions is that artificial intelligence is trying to progress to AGI, or artificial general intelligence, in which a machine will basically think a thought, or at least do an intellectual task on its own, as a human can.
To read more, click here.