Only by developing a deeper understanding of AI systems as they act in the world can we ensure that this new infrastructure never turns toxic.
Interpretation
Understanding AI is crucial to prevent negative consequences.
This quote highlights the importance of gaining a comprehensive understanding of artificial intelligence systems and their operations in our world. It emphasizes that only through this deep awareness can we safeguard against the potential risks and toxic implications that AI may have on society and infrastructure.
In practice
In a discussion on AI ethics, this quote can highlight the need for responsibility in technology development.
If you're not thinking about the way systemic bias can be propagated through the criminal justice system or predictive policing, then it's very likely that, if you're designing a system based on historical data, you're going to be perpetuating those biases.
We need to be vigilant about how we design and train these machine-learning systems, or we will see ingrained forms of bias built into the artificial intelligence of the future.
As we move into an era in which personal devices are seen as proxies for public needs, we run the risk that already-existing inequities will be further entrenched. Thus, with every big data set, we need to ask which people are excluded. Which places are less visible? What happens if you live in the shadow of big data sets?
It is a failure of imagination and methodology to claim that it is necessary to experiment on millions of people without their consent in order to produce good data science.
The fear isn't that big data discriminates. We already know that it does. It's that you don't know if you've been discriminated against.
If you have rooms that are very homogeneous, that have all had the same life experiences and educational backgrounds, and they're all relatively wealthy, their perspective on the world is going to mirror what they already know. That can be dangerous when we're making systems that will affect so many diverse populations.
Connectivity enables transparency for better government, education, and health.
The good news about computers is that they do what you tell them to do. The bad news is that they do what you tell them to do.
We've been merging with tools since the beginning of human evolution, and arguably, that's one of the things that makes us human beings.
Chess is far too complex to be definitively solved with any technology we can conceive of today. However, our looked-down-upon cousin, checkers, or draughts, suffered this fate quite recently thanks to the work of Jonathan Schaeffer at the University of Alberta and his unbeatable program Chinook.
Overwhelmed by the miraculous potentialities of the machine, our human greed has interfered with the biological cycle of human companionship which keeps the life of a community healthy.
Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.
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