In the words of Steve Jobs, technology alone is not enough. That is the foundation of Shift. A human-centered tech festival in Turku, Finland. For the third year in a row, the festival brought some of the world’s experts in to discuss how tomorrow’s tech will shape business and society.

The festival taps into a global trend. With the accelerating development of artificial intelligence and the increasing influence of algorithms, there is a need to talk ethics.

“It is the algorithms I worry about. An algorithm is a thing we predict the future with using historical data. In particular, we predict success. But we have to define success to predict it,” said Cathy O’Neil, algorithm activist and founder of ORCAA.

It’s not the data we should worry about

Cathy O’Neil underlined that this is not about data. It is about power. Today, the people who build the algorithms are the ones who define the criteria for success. That might not be the same as the general population’s definition.

Algorithms are everywhere; they decide what information you’re exposed to online, whether you qualify for a job if you can get insurance and the length of your sentence if you should ever go to prison. But algorithms are highly secretive, and they are unfair, often built on demographics with no regard for behavior or personality.

“They make lucky people luckier and unlucky people unluckier. Not only is it unfair to individuals. It is destructive to society. It creates feedback loops that hurt people,” said Cathy O’Neil.

She wants people to start asking questions. Not only if the algorithm works, but if it is legal, and if it is fair.

“There is no such thing as an algorithm that becomes ethical. An algorithm has the ethics that we have embedded into it. If we don’t admit that and take control of what we are doing we are abstaining from our responsibility,” said Cathy O’Neil.

Elon Musk’s AI guru: ‘Ignorance equals hope’

The most anticipated speaker this year was director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, philosopher Nick Boström.

In his book from 2014, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, Nick Boström identifies general machine intelligence above human level as the greatest threat to humanity. The Swedish-English expert and his writings are frequently cited by Elon Musk, known as an alarmist on AI.

Today, Boström holds a slightly more optimistic attitude toward the future.

“We are lucky in that so far we know so little – as long as there’s ignorance, there is hope,” he said praising the rising interest in discussing the consequences of machine intelligence.

“Before we had no earnest conversations about what will happen if AI succeeds. Now we have had an adequate amount of alarming concerns that is challenged into constructive action,” he said.

Nick Boström turned his eyes to the distant future after we have developed artificial superintelligence. The experts disagree on when this is, but the median answer is 2040-2045. Before then, we have to fix several significant challenges; a scalable control system, the question of governance, and what the human condition will be like in the era of machine intelligence.

“This is an unusually powerful technology, so the problem of making sure it is used wisely becomes unusually important,” said Nick Boström.

The third wave of AI

Harri Valpola, CEO of the Curious AI Company and a merited AI, neuroscience and robotics scientist, holds a more optimistic view of the future with AI. His company is building the 3rd wave of AI that will be able to plan, communicate and collaborate with humans like humans.

Dr. Harri Valpola, CEO of Curious AI

Curious AI

“Today, computers only do what they learn from the data. The 3rd wave of AI is using the same techniques that make the human mind able to handle situations we have never seen before. We are building exception handling that until now has been missing from AI,” he said.

For some reason, it is hard for humans to imagine a benign power more intelligent than us. Most times we picture machine superintelligence as evil.

“There are no fundamental limitations to what AI can be. But if you think of what kind of AI is needed, then we need AI which complements humans. We don’t need AI that can replace humans,” he said adding that to make sure we can manage and improve the AI so it won’t hurt us, we need to understand it and vice versa:

Slide from Antti Rasmus presentation at the Nordic.AI Festival 2017. Curious AI is working towards the development of the next wave of artificial intelligence.

Business Insider Nordic “The kind of AI the Curious AI Company is building is something that will work in collaboration with people. The AI should live with us as part of society because that’s from where they will get their values. That is the best way to make sure that when these AI grow up, it will be in a way we are comfortable with.”

SOURCE/LINK:

https://nordic.businessinsider.com/everybody-is-talking-about-ethics-in-tech—heres-why–