Those worried about a Terminator-like future coming at the hands of advanced artificial intelligence should be relieved to hear that experts in the field are looking to ensure we avoid just that.
The Future of Life Institute (FLI), a volunteer-only research organization, drafted an open letter Sunday that is currently getting signatures from academics and experts around the world, including Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and other top scientific and industry leaders, with the goal of making sure humanity maintains control of this technology, according to The Verge.
The letter points out several fields that have seen advances thanks to developments in AIs, such as speech recognition, image classification, machine translation and autonomous vehicles.
At the same time, the letter addresses the possibility of the technology acting against its creators rather than treating the possibility as just something you see in a sci-fi fantasy movie, CNET reported. Concerns addressed in the letter about AIs include self-driving cars' ability to minimize risk without killing their drivers and autonomous weapon systems' ability to not harm humans.
Others who have signed the letter include MIT professors, experts from tech giants like IBM and Microsoft Research and co-founders of British AI company DeepMind, which Google bought last year.
"Success in the quest for artificial intelligence has the potential to bring unprecedented benefits to humanity, and it is therefore worthwhile to research how to maximize these benefits while avoiding potential pitfalls," the letter reads.
Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has voiced his concerns about advances in AI over the past couple of years, even referring to it as "summoning a demon" and calling it more dangerous than nuclear weapons in an MIT discussion last October, CNET reported.
"I'm increasingly inclined to think there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don't do something very foolish," he said at the time.
The letter adds that AI brings huge benefits for humanity, "since everything that civilization has to offer is a product of human intelligence," The Verge reported. "We cannot predict what we might achieve when this intelligence is magnified by the tools AI may provide, but the eradication of disease and poverty are not unfathomable. Because of the great potential of AI, it is important to research how to reap its benefits while avoiding potential ptifalls."
