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Monday, September 26, 2016

How Tech Giants Are Devising Real Ethics for Artificial Intelligence

By John Markoff
The New York Times
Originally published September 1, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

One main concern for people in the tech industry would be if regulators jumped in to create rules around their A.I. work. So they are trying to create a framework for a self-policing organization, though it is not clear yet how that will function.

“We’re not saying that there should be no regulation,” said Peter Stone, a computer scientist at the University of Texas at Austin and one of the authors of the Stanford report. “We’re saying that there is a right way and a wrong way.”

While the tech industry is known for being competitive, there have been instances when companies have worked together when it was in their best interests. In the 1990s, for example, tech companies agreed on a standard method for encrypting e-commerce transactions, laying the groundwork for two decades of growth in internet business.

The authors of the Stanford report, which is titled “Artificial Intelligence and Life in 2030,” argue that it will be impossible to regulate A.I. “The study panel’s consensus is that attempts to regulate A.I. in general would be misguided, since there is no clear definition of A.I. (it isn’t any one thing), and the risks and considerations are very different in different domains,” the report says.

The article is here.