From the Influencers
This Month’s Key Quotes from Leaders in Artificial Intelligence
"I think the danger of AI is much greater than the danger of nuclear warheads by a lot, and nobody would suggest we allow the world to just build nuclear warheads if they want, that would be insane. And mark my words: AI is far more dangerous than nukes."
Not for the first time, Tesla and SpaceX founder, Elon Musk, speaks out on the impending danger posed by artificial intelligence
“I think artificial intelligence will disrupt all the different business models and it’s the next disruption to come. So I want to be part of it.”
In an interview with Wired, France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, spoke about making France an AI superpower, and his own passion for the technology.
“We believe that Google should not be in the business of war. Therefore we ask that Project Maven be cancelled, and that Google draft, publicise and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology.”
In a letter addressed to Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, thousands of Google employees protested the company’s involvement in a Pentagon programme that uses AI to interpret video imagery and could be used to improve the targeting of drone strikes.
“The world’s most prominent AI companies focus on gathering the data on which to train AI and the human capital to support and execute AI operations. If DoD is to become ‘AI‑ready’, it must continue down the pathway that Project Maven paved and create a foundation for similar projects to flourish.”
However, Alphabet board member and former Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, told the US government that the military and private tech firms should work together to ensure that the US Department of Defense is equipped with the AI systems he believes it will need to win future conflicts.
“We need to realise that the current public dialog on AI — which focuses on a narrow subset of industry and a narrow subset of academia — risks blinding us to the challenges and opportunities that are presented by the full scope of AI, IA and II.”
Michael I. Jordan, professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and the Department of Statistics at UC Berkeley, wrote in a Medium post about the need to “broaden our scope, tone down the hype and recognise the serious challenges ahead” when it comes to AI.