AI Advances Worry the World's Brightest Minds

Concerned that extreme advances in artificial intelligence could endanger humanity, Elon Musk—founder of PayPal, Tesla Motors, and SpaceX—donated ten million dollars this week to safeguard humans from an “intelligence explosion.”

The term refers to a rapid expanse of machine intelligence that could overcome our attempt to control it. In recent years, machine intelligence, also known as deep learning, has advanced substantially:

“Deep learning has boosted Android’s speech recognition, and given Skype Star Trek-like instant translation capabilities. Google is building self-driving cars, and computer systems that can teach themselves to identify cat videos.”

In the first week of 2015, AI researchers gathered at a closed-door conference in Puerto Rico to draft an open letter pledging to do research only for good ends while “avoiding potential pitfalls.”

A softer side of potential damages that artificial intelligence could do relate to human labor. As Google fervently pursues self-driving vehicles, what will become of those who drive trucks and buses for a living?

Physicist Michio Kaku sees a potentially simpler solution. Even if computer technology continues to double every 18 months—which is doubtful—we could put a chip in robots’ brains to shut them off if they start to get murderous, he says:

<br>