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Wednesday Zoom class meetings @ 9am: 6/3
The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
- Waymo, the self-driving car: Are self-driving cars safe? If something goes wrong, who is liable — the AI, the programmer, the human in the car?
- Ms. Ann, a teaching robot assistant: Do AI tutors help students learn better than a human teacher? Does cost effective mean better? Why did students in this study prefer the robot to the teacher?
- Ultra-fast, the robotic arm catches objects on the fly: Will this robot impact sports? Is playing catch with a robot better than playing with another human? Will these type of robots replace humans?
- Do robots and AI deserve rights? If we consider robots and AI “living” things, then what does how we treat them say about us? What is “electronic personhood” and why should we care?
- AI Researchers are Pushing Bias out of Algorithms. How does the way programmers create algorithms reflect their own, perhaps subconscious, instinctual biases? Do developers have an obligation to ensure their algorithms are free of bias? What is fairness and is it possible to ensure a complete lack of bias?
Today, Machine Learning is being considered the biggest new step in computer science after the invention of the Internet. Not surprisingly, it is expected to change every industry and many jobs are expected to become obsolete because of advances in this sphere.
It is not an exaggeration to say that Machine Learning is changing the world as we speak. With abundant data available for training machine-learning algorithms, these algorithms are getting exponentially smarter. Take for instance, Google’s machine learning-based language translation feature; it has had more improvements in the last one year than the last 10 years put together. One can only imagine the magnitude of improvement we shall witness in the coming years.
Also, with advances in Machine Learning, machines are expected to completely replace human drivers in the future as it will be cheaper, more reliable and safer to have machines drive. Machines don’t get tired and will provide consistent operation all the time. It is important to note that the transport sector is currently one of the world’s largest employment sectors; it accounts for around 10 percent of the world’s working population. With machines doing the driving, these jobs may not exist anymore.
Additionally, you may have noticed that over the last one year, ATM machines have gotten exceptionally accurate at reading your checks and identifying the correct amount even when the check is not legibly written; this is thanks to machine learning at work. Earlier, ATM machines scanned the checks and the machine would ask you to specify the amount. It compared the scanned text and the amount you entered on the machine and over time learnt how to read letters in different handwritings. Now it can reliably read almost anything. If it has a hard time reading a check, it will ask you for the amount just like before and it will learn it at the same time; this means that the next time around, similar handwriting will also be accurately read by the machine. Thus, bank employees will no longer be needed to verify checks.
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