Ask the AI experts: Should we be afraid of AI?

With advances in artificial-intelligence technology occurring more rapidly than ever, the potential for AI to assist us in nearly everything we do at work and at home has become very real. However, some fear that along with AI's tremendous upside of delivering efficiencies humans could not possibly realize on their own comes a dark side--the possibility that super-intelligent AI machines could develop complete autonomy and act against human interests. Earlier this year at the AI Frontiers conference in Santa Clara, California, we sat down with AI experts from some of the world's leading technology-first organizations to find out if fears about AI overtaking humankind have any founding. An edited version of their remarks follows. Adam Coates, director, Baidu Research Silicon Valley AI Lab: I do think sometimes we get carried away and start to think about sentient machines--machines that are just going to understand everything the way that we do and totally interact with us like a human.