Assignment 3: artificial intelligence Cheryl and Kaiting

Summary
Artificial-Intelligence (AI) brings about many possible benefits to the society. Currently, we are already surrounded by AI systems in the technology that we own. Recent breakthroughs include self-driving cars, digital personal assistants Siri and robots that function like humans. A huge benefit would be the magnification of human intelligence through the many tools that AI could provide. However, other than the many benefits AI has, in near the term, world militaries are considering autonomous-weapon systems that can choose and eliminate targets although the UN and Human Rights Watch have advocated a treaty banning such weapons. In the new upcoming age of AI, the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all. AI may transform our economy to bring both great wealth and great dislocation.
Readers Response Do you think Stephen Hawking’s fears are unfounded? Whose stand do you take and why?
Stephen Hawking's fears are refutable. I acknowledge the potential risks he has raised, however, in order to attain success for anything, be it in education or science or life, one cannot avoid taking risks, and the same applies to artificial intelligence. In the future, with the aid of artificial intelligence, many manual work can be replaced by artificial intelligence systems. Although this would bring about much convenience and raise efficiency and productivity in industries, many will become jobless as a result as well. This is just one of the many prominent problems advancements in artificial intelligence could bring about. However, we cannot overlook the fact that artificial intelligence has created many things which we rely on heavily today, from providing services to aid in healthcare to reducing labour in household chores. Therefore, as long as we can effectively cope with these potential risks, we can still take venture and advance more in artificial intelligence and come up with more creations to benefit mankind. Laws and policies can be strongly enforced to ensure that creations of artificial intelligence are not misused. Thus, I take the stand of Adam Gibson because he feels that although such technology has many drawbacks to it, without it, we cannot possibly face and resolve many of the complex problems today. Even if artificial intelligence is dangerous to venture into, we have already gone too far into this field and there's no more turning back, we can only go further and try to avoid the dangers lurking along the way.