quotations about artificial intelligence
If [Elon] Musk is the Cassandra of artificial intelligence -- a pooh-poohed prophet, helplessly predicting the destruction of proverbial Troy -- many scientists, in contrast, appear more than happy to wave in AI's gleaming, giant horse. Right now, our friends at the Pentagon are reportedly piecing together a battalion of fighting robots. Ray Kurzweil, an author and futurist who has long and enthusiastically predicted the ultimate merger of man and machine, now works as a director of engineering at Google -- a company, as the Guardian reports, that is diligently "working on an artificial intelligence similar to those portrayed in movies." Sounds great, until you remember that many of those movies are actually kind of scary. One exception -- and perhaps an early indicator of humanity's growing acceptance of our nascent robot overlords -- was 2013's Her, an AI drama that features a lonely, sensitive Joaquin Phoenix falling in love with a whip-smart computer operating system, voiced by the sultry Scarlett Johansson.
HEATHER WILHELM
"Should Humans Fear Artificial Intelligence", Dallas Morning News, Nov. 28, 2014
Human beings, viewed as behaving systems, are quite simple. The apparent complexity of our behavior over time is largely a reflection of the complexity of the environment in which we find ourselves.
HERBERT A. SIMON
The Sciences of the Artificial
A sinister threat is brewing deep inside the technology laboratories of Silicon Valley. Artificial Intelligence, disguised as helpful digital assistants and self-driving vehicles, is gaining a foothold -- and it could one day spell the end for mankind.
ELLIE ZOLFAGHARIFARD
Mail Online
The key issue as to whether or not a non-biological entity deserves rights really comes down to whether or not it's conscious.... Does it have feelings?
RAY KURZWEIL
USA Today, Aug. 19, 2007
Today's AI fills the computational gaps in human ability, and where computers fail to exercise executive function, humans are standing by to hold the flight controls, a symbiotic relationship and an augmentation of human endeavor that undermines the tale perpetuated by those with a flair for the dramatic. Guarding against a robotic uprising is prudent, but such Terminator-esque imagery distracts from the positive influence of today's AI. Climate change, rising sea levels, unsustainable population growth, pollution, Kanye West, disease, war, greed and willful ignorance could well combine forces to end humanity, but if AI is to have a role in that play, it's not the role of bad guy. It's that of a beacon that guides Earth to safety.
COLIN WOOD
"Grounding AI: Artificial Intelligence is Closer -- and Less Awesome -- than Most Realize", Government Technology, January 20, 2016
AI is not the science of building artificial people. It's not the science of understanding human intelligence. It's not even the science of trying to build artifacts that can imitate human behavior well enough to fool someone that the machine is human, as proposed in the famous Turing test ... AI is the science of making machines do tasks that humans can do or try to do ... you could argue ... that much of computer science and engineering is included in this definition.
JAMES F. ALLEN
AI Magazine, Winter 1998
The main lesson of thirty-five years of AI research is that the hard problems are easy and the easy problems are hard. The mental abilities of a four-year-old that we take for granted -- recognizing a face, lifting a pencil, walking across a room, answering a question -- in fact solve some of the hardest engineering problems ever conceived.... As the new generation of intelligent devices appears, it will be the stock analysts and petrochemical engineers and parole board members who are in danger of being replaced by machines. The gardeners, receptionists, and cooks are secure in their jobs for decades to come.
STEVEN PINKER
The Language Instinct
In order to maximize positive outcomes, organizations should hire ethicists who work with corporate decisionmakers and software developers, have a code of AI ethics that lays out how various issues will be handled, organize an AI review board that regularly addresses corporate ethical questions, have AI audit trails that show how various coding decisions have been made, implement AI training programs so staff operationalizes ethical considerations in their daily work, and provide a means for remediation when AI solutions inflict harm or damages on people or organizations.
DARRELL M. WEST
"What is artificial intelligence?", Brookings Institution, October 4, 2018
Sci-fi loves to depict military AIs as malign killer minds or robots. But the truth is more subtle and more terrifying -- and it's happening right now.
KENNETH PAYNE
"Artificial intelligence is about to revolutionise warfare. Be afraid", New Scientist, September 12, 2018
Almost every time people have played with the idea of an AI and what it will look like, and what it means for it to be scary, it's been tremendously anthropomorphized. You have this thing -- it comes, it walks at you, and it sounds like you're probably going to die, or it made it very clear that there's some chance your life is in jeopardy. The thing that scares me the most about that is not the likelihood that in the next five years something like this will happen to us, but the likelihood that it will not. Over the course of the next five years, as companies continue to get better and better at building these technologies, the public at large will not understand what it is that is being done with their data, what they're giving away, and how they should be scared of the ways that AI is already playing in and with their lives and information.
MARAN NELSON
"How science fiction is training us to ignore the real threats posed by AI", The Verge, June 20, 2018
Can we design AI systems whose goals do not conflict with ours so that we are sure to be happy with they way they behave? This is far from easy -- after all, stories with a genie and three wishes often end with a third wish to undo the first two.
STUART RUSSELL
"Should We Fear Supersmart Robots?", Scientific American, June 2016
The attribution of intelligence to machines, crowds of fragments, or other nerd deities obscures more than it illuminates. When people are told that a computer is intelligent, they become prone to changing themselves in order to make the computer appear to work better, instead of demanding that the computer be changed to become more useful.
JARON LANIER
You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto
When people talk about the future of technology, especially artificial intelligence, they very often have the common dystopian Hollywood-movie model of us versus the machines. My view is that we will use these tools as we've used all other tools--to broaden our reach. And in this case, we'll be extending the most important attribute we have, which is our intelligence.
RAY KURZWEIL
"Reinvent Yourself", Playboy, April 19, 2016
If there is a way of guaranteeing that superior artificial intellects will never harm human beings, then such intellects will be created. If there is no way to have such a guarantee, then they will probably be created nevertheless.
NICK BOSTROM
attributed, "The superhero of artificial intelligence: can this genius keep it in check?", The Guardian, February 16, 2016
Artificial Intelligence is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it allows us to create intelligent artifacts with human-like perception and cognition. On the other hand, it accelerates people's heavy dependence on artifacts.
MAX BRAMER
Artificial Intelligence: An International Perspective
AI, which will likely get to AGI (artificial general intelligence) by being programmed to self-improve, wouldn't see "human-level intelligence" as some important milestone--it's only a relevant marker from our point of view--and wouldn't have any reason to "stop" at our level.... It's pretty obvious that it would only hit human intelligence for a brief instant before racing onwards to the realm of superior-to-human intelligence.
TIM URBAN
"The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence", Wait But Why, January 22, 2015
One can imagine such technology outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand. Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all.
STEPHEN HAWKING
"Transcendence looks at the implications of artificial intelligence -- but are we taking AI seriously enough?", The Independent, May 1, 2014
What's undeniable is how the possibility of AI stirs the imagination of the public. This is evident in the science fiction and entertainment we consume. We may have strong AI in a couple of years, or it might take a couple of centuries. What's certain is that we're unlikely to ever give up on the pursuit.
CAMERON COWARD
"The Future of Artificial Intelligence", Hackaday, February 13, 2017
AI is already part of the operations within many companies we interact with every day, from Apple's Siri to how Uber dispatches drivers to the way Facebook arranges its Newsfeed. In fact, Facebook is making research into AI a priority, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently stating that one of his goals this year is to "code" a personal assistant to "help run his life."
JULIA BOORSTIN
"It's too late! Artificial intelligence is already everywhere", CNBC, January 26, 2016
I envision some years from now that the majority of search queries will be answered without you actually asking. It'll just know this is something that you're going to want to see.
RAY KURZWEIL
interview, Singularity Hub, Jan. 10, 2013