Jan 16, 2015 by Toby Walsh, The Conversation Science fiction has plenty of tales of AI turning against society including the popular Terminator movie franchise, here depicted on brick wall art. Credit: Flickr/Garry Knight, CC BY-SA

Some of the biggest players in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have joined together calling for any research to focus on the benefits we can reap from AI "while avoiding potential pitfalls". Research into AI continues to seek out new ways to develop technologies that can take on tasks currently performed by humans, but it's not without criticisms and concerns.

I am not sure the famous British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking does irony but it was somewhat ironic that he recently welcomed the arrival of the smarter predictive computer software that controls his speech by warning us that:

The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.

Of course, Hawking is not alone in this view. The serial entrepreneur and technologist Elon Musk also warned last year that:

[] we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it's probably that.

Both address an issue that taps into deep, psychological fears that have haunted mankind for centuries. What happens if our creations eventually cause our own downfall? This fear is expressed in stories like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

An open letter for AI

In response to such concerns, an open letter has just been signed by top AI researchers in industry and academia (as well as by Hawking and Musk).

Signatures include those of the president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the founders of AI startups DeepMind and Vicarious, and well-known researchers at Google, Microsoft, Stanford and elsewhere.

Original post:

Artificial Intelligence should benefit society, not create threats