Date: Wednesday January 16th 2019
CACOR Luncheon Speaker: Dr. Peter MacKinnon
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is constantly in the news with stories of promise and threat for good and bad. Political leaders have declared it a national priority, the global high tech industry is racing AI apps to markets and policy and governance implications of AI are in their infancy. We will explore where this is all heading.
We will begin with some definitions and a bit of history behind the rise of AI. The talk will then place AI in the context of being a potentially disruptive technology on society.
Today, AI is such a ‘hot topic’ that even political leadership in many countries talk up the benefits of AI while pouring money into AI research and commercialization opportunities. We will briefly look at the emerging AI market with respect to scale, offerings and expectations resulting from all the ‘hot topic’ activities.
The notion of an ‘AI race’ and its possible future scenarios will be considered in respect to developments such as autonomous decision making, which in the end demands the establishment of appropriate ethical choices as prerequisites for prevention and management of rogue situations.
This will lead to a discussion about ethics and moral issues regarding the development and use of aspects of AI as a dual-use technology. The role of AI in defence and security will be used as an example for appreciating the complexity and ethical issues brought on by AI.
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