'Bletchley made me more optimistic': how experts reacted to AI summit

Bletchley Park, a milestone in Alan Turing's journey to technological immortality, heard warnings this week that the coming wave of artificial intelligence systems could threaten humanity. But for one of the world's leading tech investors, holding back AI development will be just as damaging in terms of deaths in car crashes, pandemics and poorly targeted munitions that could have been prevented by the technology. "We believe any deceleration of AI will cost lives. Deaths that were preventable by the AI that was prevented from existing is a form of murder," wrote Marc Andreessen, an early investor in Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter, in a blogpost last month titled The Techno-Optimist Manifesto. When it comes to AI, Andreessen is not the only techno-optimist out there, despite the pessimistic view of the technology dominating the agenda in the run-up to last week's AI safety summit at Bletchley.