Artificial intelligence has the potential to be a very powerful tool that will solve difficult social problems, help us think faster and become more efficient. The impact on our daily lives will be pronounced: machines such as robot vacuums take the drudgery out of daily chores while self-driving cars will be great for the elderly and physically disabled. What new technologies are out there? How do we reap the benefits while avoiding negative consequences?
Stuart Russell, Professor, University of California, Berkeley, USA; Global Agenda Council on Artificial Intelligence & Robotics, said the growing interest in artificial intelligence stems from techniques that have been researched, in some cases for decades, and that have crossed the threshold from interesting laboratory curiosity to usability in the real world. From the outside, it seems like an explosion; from the inside, it is no more than a continuous process. The recent spotlight on Google’s self-driving car overshadows the fact that the first self-driving car was actually unveiled in Germany in 1988.
Russell estimates that commercial investments in robotics over the past five years have exceeded worldwide government investments in robotics research since the 1950s.
Rodney Brooks, Founder, Chairman and Chief Technical Officer, Rethink Robotics, USA; Technology Pioneer, says that unlike traditional robots, which were made at a time when computers and sensors were expensive, today’s robots come with the same appeal as smartphone technology: easy to use in everyday applications and with a better sense of the environment. He sees ageing baby boomers as the real drivers of robotic applications. “I look at the 2014 S-Class Mercedes as an ‘eldercare’ robot. It gives people the ability to drive longer and have more autonomy in their lives.”
But it will be some time before the commercial launch of self-driving cars. Brooks says the trouble with them is “they give no social clues; they become kings of the road”. He says the vehicles will face acceptance problems unless they are more aligned with normal human interactions.
Anthony Goldbloom, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Kaggle, USA; Technology Pioneer, is upbeat about the future of machine learning, noting that advances in network technology and other techniques are increasingly pushing robotics towards the mainstream.
However, as robotics technology becomes more ubiquitous, ethical concerns have become more widespread. Kenneth Roth, Executive Director, Human Rights Watch, USA, calls for a proper regulatory and ethical framework to guard against the misuse of such technologies. In warfare, for example, fully autonomous weapons – so-called killer robots – don’t have the human judgement to avoid civilian targets. Privacy issues arise when the data collected for household applications is made available to governments. In healthcare, while smart technology can warn a person that they have a serious medical condition, in the hands of an insurance company the same data can work to the person’s detriment, precluding them from cover.
Anthony Goldbloom believes that people of the Google generation are less sensitive about issues of privacy and are quite willing to trade some of it for convenience.
Hiroaki Nakanishi, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Hitachi, Japan, says that combined with big-data analytics, artificial intelligence possesses “powerful tools for making optimized solutions”. The challenge is to collect big data through collaboration with customers and society, and manage the controversial social and cultural issues that will arise when data is being mined.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.