The artificial intelligence revolution is coming and right now, Silicon Valley holds the power – ABC Online

Posted August 10, 2017 07:02:33

In the argument between Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, it's hard to know which side to join. Both of them are right. Or, if you like, both of them are wrong.

Musk is wrong to worry about artificial intelligence (AI) being a threat to humanity, so I agree with Zuckerberg. And Zuckerberg is wrong to dismiss all concerns about AI, so I agree with Musk. But neither of them are worrying about the right things.

AI is transforming almost every aspect of our lives, from the workspace to the political arena. You can't open a newspaper today without reading a story about some impressive advance in AI.

Are machines taking over people's jobs? Are algorithms having an impact on political debate? Will robots transform warfare? Are we sleepwalking into some dystopian future?

First, let's put to rest Elon Musk's worry. The machines aren't about to take over the world anytime soon. Those of us working on building intelligent machines appreciate how much of a challenge remains. We're not going to wake up anytime soon and discover the machines are in charge.

Most of my colleagues working in AI estimate it is at least 50 years before we can build machines as smart as humans. And when we do, it's not inevitable they'll be able to make themselves even smarter still.

So, there is plenty of time to ensure the machines are working in our best interests. And there's a healthy community of researchers working on the topic of "AI safety" to ensure that outcome.

But that doesn't mean we can simply put our feet up and wait for the bright future. There's a lot to worry about. Some AI is smart, some is stupid. We're starting to give responsibility to algorithms that aren't actually very intelligent.

Joshua Brown discovered this to his cost in May last year. He was immortalised as the first person killed by their autonomous car. His Tesla was driving down the highway in "autopilot mode" when it hit a truck turning across the road. Mr Brown had too much faith in the technology.

Another worry is the impact AI is having on political discourse. When millions of Donald Trump's Twitter followers are robots, you have to worry if human voices are being drowned out by computers. If the news you see on Facebook is decided by algorithms, who decides on the biases in these algorithms?

A third worry is the impact AI will have on the workforce. There's no fundamental law of economics that requires new technologies to create more jobs than they destroy, which has been the case so far. There are more people working today than ever, and unemployment is at historically low levels.

But this time could be different. In the Industrial Revolution, machines took over much manual labour but left us with many cognitive tasks. In the AI revolution, machines will take over many of these cognitive tasks. What is left for us?

The Industrial Revolution offers us a good historical precedent for dealing with change like this. Before the industrial revolution, many people worked out in the fields. After the Industrial Revolution, machines took over many of these jobs. And new jobs were created in offices and factories.

But we needed to make some significant changes to society to deal with this transition.

We invented universal education so people were educated for these new jobs. We invented labour laws and unions so the owners of the production didn't exploit their workers. We invented a welfare state and pensions so all of us shared the increased wealth. We made some deep, structural changes to society so everyone shared the benefits of increasing productivity.

These changes didn't happen overnight. Indeed, there were 50 years or so of pain before many workers saw their quality of life lift above what is was before the Industrial Revolution.

This then is the challenge we face today except the AI revolution will likely happen even faster than the Industrial Revolution. For this reason, we need more regulation.

Many tech companies like Facebook and Google are driven by opaque algorithms and are increasingly impacting on our lives in undesirable ways.

Facebook is now the largest news organisation on the planet, yet it doesn't have the same responsibilities as the traditional press.

Google is starting to know too much about our lives, and will need to be broken into parts to prevent it becoming a monopoly. Actually, by creating the holding company Alphabet, Larry Page and Sergey Brin have made the regulators' job much easier.

And it's hard to know where to begin with Uber, one of the most badly behaved of them all.

If Google or other companies won't pay taxes, then more countries besides Australia and the UK need to make a Google tax to force them to do so.

Silicon Valley can't wash its hands of the responsibility that comes with immense reach.

For too long, we (and our governments) have been seduced by the promises spun by technologists.

AI is one of the few hopes for tackling many of the problems that challenge us today like climate change and the ongoing global financial crisis.

But with immense power comes responsibility.

Toby Walsh is the Scientia Professor of AI at the University of New South Wales and the author of It's Alive!: Artificial Intelligence from the Logic Piano to Killer Robots.

Topics: robots-and-artificial-intelligence, science-and-technology, australia