Peterson 0

Jacob Peterson

Ms. Anne Torgersen

English 12 - Period 8

February 12th, 2018

AACC #4

Annotations

● The startling capabilities that deep learning has given computers in recent years,

from human-level voice recognition and image classification to basic

conversational skills, have prompted warnings about the progress AI is making

toward matching, or perhaps surpassing, human intelligence.

● Prominent figures such as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have even

cautioned that artificial intelligence could pose an existential threat to humanity.

● Machine learning means you have a painstaking, slow process of acquiring

information through millions of examples.

● Right now, the way we're teaching machines to be intelligent is that we have to

tell the computer what is an image, even at the pixel level.

● Brains work, and we still don't know why in many ways. Improving that

understanding has a great potential to help AI research.

● The thing I'm more worried about, in a foreseeable future, is not computers taking

over the world. I'm more worried about misuse of AI. Things like bad military

uses, manipulating people through really smart advertising; also, the social

impact, like many people losing their jobs.

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● Society needs to get together and come up with a collective response, and not

leave it to the law of the jungle to sort things out.

Abstract

The article consists of an introduction of a professor of computer science at the

University of Montreal named Yoshua Bengio and an interview conducted by an MIT

Technology Review's senior editor. The author addresses some of the things that

prominent figures such as Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking have said about the

dangers of Artificial Intelligence and the need for limits and possibly laws. The article

then proceeds to the interview with Bengio. A key question that was asked to Bengio

was: “Is there a risk that AI researchers might accidentally "unleash the demon," as

Musk has put it?” Summarizing Bengio response, he said that AI isn’t something that

can instantly turn to a ‘demon’. It takes time for the Artificial Intelligence to learn so

nothing is going to jump out of the ordinary into an uncontrollable state. He also says

that journalists like to exaggerate the truth and write about ‘breakthrough’ technologies

that some startup company just made. The articles sums up by stating a call to action

that we (as humans) should be talking about this subject more and the possible virtual

consequences tied to AI as well as the laws that should be put in place to help control

this engineering feat.

Contextual Connection

I agree with the authors quoting of Elon Musk’s statement of the possible dangers of AI

as well as possible solutions to potential issues created. I never knew that, as Bengio

says, the creating, progressing, and learning of Artificial Intelligence is a painstakingly

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slow process that takes lots of time and resources. This text is very important to my

topic because although it doesn’t stress too much about the immediate dangers of AI, it

does stress that this is a pressing issue that needs to be discussed more. It also

discusses that although AI is slow in development, it is progressing toward a more

intelligent state which can possibly lead to the difficulty of controlling it.

Source

"Will machines eliminate us?" ​MIT Technology Review​, Mar.-Apr. 2016, p. 30+. ​Science

in Context​,

http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A446814331/SCIC?u=pioneer&xid=fa8d1894.

Accessed 21 Feb. 2018.