/ News
Artificial Intelligence Ethics a New Focus at Cambridge University
A new center to study the implications of artificial intelligence and try to influence its ethical development has been established at the U.K.’s Cambridge University, the latest sign that concerns are rising about AI’s impact on everything from loss of jobs to humanity’s very existence.
The Leverhulme Trust, a non-profit foundation that awards grants for academic research in the U.K., on Thursday announced a grant of £10 million ($15 million) over ten years to the university to establish the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence.
The new facility will be directed by Professor Huw Price, the university’s Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy. Others on the team include political scientists, lawyers, psychologists and technologists, said Prof. Gordon Marshall, the director of the Leverhulme Trust.
The Trust sprang out of a company that now is part of Unilever ULVR.LN -1.69%. However, the European consumer goods conglomerate had no official role in the Trust’s allocation of funding, Marshall said. Several former Unilever employees serve on the Trust’s board of directors, he said.
The new center will work in conjunction with the university’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, which researches emerging risks to humanity’s future, including climate change, biological warfare, and artificial intelligence. Price is also the academic director at the CSER.
U.S. tech giants Google, Microsoft MSFT -2.19%, Amazon, Twitter TWTR -4.13% andFacebook FB -3.13%, as well as Baidu from China, have recently boosted their artificial intelligence research departments, staffing them with top-tier AI researchers from academia. Recently, big names like Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates and Elon Musk have warned about the possible dangers to humanity of intelligent, self-aware machines.
In an interview, Price said part of the job would be to create an AI community with a common purpose of responsible innovation, and to update the current thinking about the opportunities and challenges posed by AI.
“Using memes from science fiction movies made decades ago –the case of 2001: A Space Odyssey — that was 50 years ago. Stanley Kubrick was a brilliant film director but we can do better than that now,” he said. The classic film features a sentient computer program called HAL-9000 on board a space ship. The computer kills the ship’s crew.
A still from “2001: A Space Odyssey” with Keir Dullea reflected in the lens of HAL’s “eye.” MGM / POLARIS / STANLEY KUBRICK
The new center will also collaborate with the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford, Imperial College London, and the University of California, Berkeley. A major focus of the collaboration would be around what Price called “the value alignment program,” where software programmers would team up with ethicists and philosophers on trying to write code that would govern the behavior of artificial intelligence programs.
“As a species, we need a successful transition to an era in which we share the planet with high-level, non-biological intelligence,” Price said. “We don’t know how far away that is, but we can be pretty confident that it’s in our future. Our challenge is to make sure that goes well.”
The new center in Cambridge joins others around the world set up recently to study the consequences of intelligent machines. In July, the Future of Life Institute, based in Cambridge, Mass., awarded $7 million from Elon Musk to “keep AI robust and beneficial.”
Cambridge University is a hotbed for AI research.
Last year, Google acquired London-based DeepMind Technologies, an AI company started by Cambridge graduate Demis Hassabis. This November, Mr. Hassabis said he had held discussions with Stephen Hawking, who Hassabis said was very worried about the ethical issues surrounding Google’s progress on AI. Mr. Hawking’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
In October, Apple acquired Cambridge-based VocalIQ, an AI startup working on ways to improve computers’ ability to understand human speech and to “speak” more naturally.
Correction: Prof. Gordon Marshall is the director of the Leverhulme Trust. An earlier version of this post mispelled his second name as Marshal.
Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/12/03/artificial-intelligence-ethics-a-new-focus-at-cambridge-university/
/ About us
Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
/ Follow us at:
/ Contact:
For additional information, partnerships and sponsorship, contact:
info@2045.com
Media requesting information and interviews, contact PR@2045.com
LinkedIn
LiveJournal
Google
Twitter
Facebook
Я.ру
ВКонтакте
Mail.ru