[smart (OP)]

What are the risks and perils of artificial intelligence (AI)?

Should we put artificial intelligence research in the public domain to promote the democratization of this scientific field?

Could hackers (or a evil corporation) exploit deep learning systems to obtain sensitive data about our political opinions?

What do you think?   

[Kryptid]

Could hackers (or a evil corporation) exploit deep learning systems to obtain sensitive data about our political opinions?

AI isn't even necessary to get that kind of information.

[smart (OP)]

AI isn't even necessary to get that kind of information.

Citation needed.

[alancalverd]

My political opinions are expressed at every election and are of no importance to anyone at any other time.

[Kryptid]

Citation needed.

Haven't you ever heard of a keylogger? That doesn't have to be remotely "intelligent" to do its job. It's basically just a recording program.

[Bored chemist]

AI isn't even necessary to get that kind of information.

Citation needed.

Is there anyone on this site who has read a handful of my posts, but is unaware of my political views?
I think I can cite "ME!" as a reasonable response here.

So, we have the observation that a key-logger can capture my views, and so can anyone who bothers to read them.
Why do you think AI would help?

[Bored chemist]

My political opinions are expressed at every election and are of no importance to anyone at any other time.

I look forward to reminding you that you feel that your views on political matters are of no importance outside of an election.
;-)

[jeffreyH]

What the developers think they are creating is artificial intelligence when it is more likely they will get artificial stupidity. So I would say it should stop now before they make fools of themselves.

[alancalverd]

My political opinions are expressed at every election and are of no importance to anyone at any other time.

I look forward to reminding you that you feel that your views on political matters are of no importance outside of an election.
;-)

There is a significant difference between my political views and my views on political matters.

[chris]

Some useful resources that we've covered recently on the Naked Scientists that readers might find relevant:

Article by Peter Clarke on the future impacts, benefits and risks of artificial intelligence.

Naked Scientists Podcast asking "Will and artificially intelligent robot steal my job?"

Round table discussion on the Naked Scientists (2017) with AI specialists, including benefits, risks and applications of artificial intelligence in industry.

[smart (OP)]

In case you haven't seen it, I highly recommend you go watch "The Circle" for a pretty good overview of how corporations are using machine learning systems to deploy advanced surveillance technology.

I really think machine learning and artificial intelligence should be a public domain asset, not a global corporate tool to monitor our behavior with robots.

It is a potential threat to our privacy to export all our neurometrics and biometrics in the Cloud!

 

[David Cooper]

It isn't necessarily a good idea to make it all open - this stuff could be put into weapons and used by vicious regimes to kill whole races of people, so it would be safest to use the technology to take over all dictatorships first rather than just handing them the most dangerous weapon of all time up front.

[evan_au]

George Orwell's dystopian novel "1984" could not work with manual labor, as it would need at least 20% of the population to monitor the other 80%.

But today's smartphones hear everything you say (and peek out of your pocket to see everything you see). Now add in smart TVs and voice-response "Barbie" dolls... With AI to analyse it all, suddenly "1984" is not so remote.

At present, the immense processing power to create an AI limits the power of these techniques - to such an extent that Google has introduced special AI processors. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensor_processing_unit

But many tiny creatures manage learning with far less power dissipation, so AI scientists are hoping to learn from biology how to make AI more efficient.

Psychology experiments have shown that people behave more responsibly and ethically if they know (or think) that someone is watching them. So it wouldn't be all bad. It's just that over time, people will adopt the ethics of the imagined watchers.

So what are the ethics of the NSA?

[evan_au]

Could hackers (or a evil corporation) exploit deep learning systems to obtain sensitive data about our political opinions?

My political views are derived from cartoons printed in newspapers.

Record what someone reads (the "metadata"), and you know a lot about that person's views.

[mrsmith2211]

This has gone a long way from the original question of "Where should AI stop." there is not a speed governor on AI, trying to stop it is like trying to stop the industrial revolution, my estimation it is not possible. So we have to live with it, or go Amish. There is so much data making it all manageable used to be a dream, but it is a reality now, even my smart phone has more capabilities for monitoring my activities than Orwell's big brother would have dreamed of. My favorite quote from early security issues regarding fingerprint recognition security, as there was none, If they want to provide us that information who are we to object. Throw in facial scanners at airports, iris scans etc. it will be more difficult to remain anonymous, and the game goes on.
Ending with a star wars quote, could have been princess, "The tighter you close your grip the quicker we slip through your fingers"

[smart (OP)]

Thanks for the input everyone! I really think artificial intelligence technology should be fully democratized and placed in the public domain. The potential risk of abuse of artificial intelligence is a serious threat to our privacy and security: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/13/artificial-intelligence-ai-abuses-fascism-donald-trump

[jeffreyH]

I'm sorry but none of that is intelligent. It is advanced pattern recognition. We currently have no idea how intelligence works.

[smart (OP)]

I'm sorry but none of that is intelligent. It is advanced pattern recognition. We currently have no idea how intelligence works.

Well, it's true that the science behind AI is nothing compared to human intelligence. But do not underestimate the risk of poor interpretation of the machine-compiled data!

By the way, @jeffreyH, the science which study how human intelligence works is known as neuroscience: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_and_intelligence

[jeffreyH]

There are different types of intelligence. All variations of intelligence can process data and initiate actions. The actions are the problem. You are then getting into the study of behaviour and motivation. What is the motivation for AI to select people for deportation. It has none. The developers have the motivation to profit from the sale of the system. They have developed blind stupidity.

[David Cooper]

We currently have no idea how intelligence works.

But many people do have some idea about how it works, and some have worked out all of the details. I don't know why you think intelligence is such a difficult business when it's simply the application of kinds of logical reasoning that have been understood by mathematicians for at least a century. The big barrier has always been in linguistics rather than in reasoning because it takes a lot of complex wrestling with words and concepts to get to the point where the simple reasoning in the machine can get a handle on the tangled mess that we use for communication so that it can make useful comparisons between similar ideas expressed through radically different wording.