Group items tagged

The challenge for the 21 century is to say, OK we've got the devices which can collect and store this data, but what shall we do with that data and what are the advantages of understanding that data, will it help us navigate society better and to help us improve the way that we live? And there are lots of different aspects to working that out.

Algorithms making decisions in situations where the stakes are high need to be very accurate to make-up for high penalties when things go wrong. On the flipside, if the penalty from making an error is low, even inaccurate algorithms might be up to the task.

British professor Geoffrey Hinton says that humans should not fear the growing intelligence of machines, but the development of military robots should be a concern.

Hidden biases may be written inadvertently into the algorithms used to decide who gets a job interview or who qualifies for a loan or for parole. If a data set considers the word "programmer" closer to the word "man" than "woman," or if you build a system that learns from Wikipedia, where only 17 per cent of profiles of notable people are women, these biases will be perpetuated in the machine.

As fears grow that artificial intelligence could wipe us out, one radical idea to stop it is that man and machine merge