Martin Ford - Architects of Intelligence: The truth about AI from the people building it

AUTHOR, FUTURIST

Artificial intelligence is rapidly transitioning from the realm of science fiction to the reality of our daily lives. Our devices understand what we say, speak to us, and translate between languages with ever-increasing fluency. AI-powered visual recognition algorithms are outperforming people and beginning to find applications in everything from self-driving cars to systems that diagnose cancer in medical images. Major media organizations increasingly rely on automated journalism to turn raw data into coherent news stories that are virtually indistinguishable from those written by human journalists.

The list goes on and on, and it is becoming evident that AI is poised to become one of the most important forces shaping our world. Unlike more specialized innovations, artificial intelligence is becoming a true general-purpose technology. In other words, it is evolving into a utilitynot unlike electricitythat is likely to ultimately scale across every industry, every sector of our economy, and nearly every aspect of science, society and culture.

The demonstrated power of artificial intelligence has, in the last few years, led to massive media exposure and commentary. Countless news articles, books, documentary films and television programs breathlessly enumerate AIs accomplishments and herald the dawn of a new era. The result has been a sometimes incomprehensible mixture of careful, evidence-based analysis, together with hype, speculation and what might be characterized as outright fear-mongering. We are told that fully autonomous self-driving cars will be sharing our roads in just a few yearsand that millions of jobs for truck, taxi and Uber drivers are on the verge of vaporizing. Evidence of racial and gender bias has been detected in certain machine learning algorithms, and concerns about how AI-powered technologies such as facial recognition will impact privacy seem well-founded. Warnings that robots will soon be weaponized, or that truly intelligent (or superintelligent) machines might someday represent an existential threat to humanity, are regularly reported in the media. A number of very prominent public figuresnone of whom are actual AI expertshave weighed in. Elon Musk has used especially extreme rhetoric, declaring that AI research is summoning the demon and that AI is more dangerous than nuclear weapons. Even less volatile individuals, including Henry Kissinger and the late Stephen Hawking, have issued dire warnings.

The purpose of this book is to illuminate the field of artificial intelligenceas well as the opportunities and risks associated with itby having a series of deep, wide-ranging conversations with some of the worlds most prominent AI research scientists and entrepreneurs. Many of these people have made seminal contributions that directly underlie the transformations we see all around us; others have founded companies that are pushing the frontiers of AI, robotics and machine learning.

Selecting a list of the most prominent and influential people working in a field is, of course, a subjective exercise, and without doubt there are many other people who have made, or are making, critical contributions to the advancement of AI. Nonetheless, I am confident that if you were to ask nearly anyone with a deep knowledge of the field to compose a list of the most important minds who have shaped contemporary research in artificial intelligence, you would receive a list of names that substantially overlaps with the individuals interviewed in this book. The men and women I have included here are truly the architects of machine intelligenceand, by extension, of the revolution it will soon unleash.

The conversations recorded here are generally open-ended, but are designed to address some of the most pressing questions that face us as artificial intelligence continues to advance: What specific AI approaches and technologies are most promising, and what kind of breakthroughs might we see in the coming years? Are true thinking machinesor human-level AIa real possibility and how soon might such a breakthrough occur? What risks, or threats, associated with artificial intelligence should we be genuinely concerned about? And how should we address those concerns? Is there a role for government regulation? Will AI unleash massive economic and job market disruption, or are these concerns overhyped? Could superintelligent machines someday break free of our control and pose a genuine threat? Should we worry about an AI arms race, or that other countries with authoritarian political systems, particularly China, may eventually take the lead?

It goes without saying that no one really knows the answers to these questions. No one can predict the future. However, the AI experts Ive spoken to here do know more about the current state of the technology, as well as the innovations on the horizon, than virtually anyone else. They often have decades of experience and have been instrumental in creating the revolution that is now beginning to unfold. Therefore, their thoughts and opinions deserve to be given significant weight. In addition to my questions about the field of artificial intelligence and its future, I have also delved into the backgrounds, career trajectories and current research interests of each of these individuals, and I believe their diverse origins and varied paths to prominence will make for fascinating and inspiring reading.

Artificial intelligence is a broad field of study with a number of subdisciplines, and many of the researchers interviewed here have worked in multiple areas. Some also have deep experience in other fields, such as the study of human cognition. Nonetheless, what follows is a brief attempt to create a very rough road map showing how the individuals interviewed here relate to the most important recent innovations in AI research and to the challenges that lie ahead. More background information about each person is available in his or her biography, which is located immediately after the interview.