$27M Fund Wants Artificial Intelligence with a Conscience

Humans need to make artificial intelligence socially conscious, and a new technology fund aims to support developers and behavioral scientists trying to do that. Several prominent technology institutions are contributing a combined $27 million to the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Fund, which is designed to harness artificial intelligence for the public interest. The fund, helmed by MIT's Media Lab and Harvard's Center for Internet & Society, encompasses $10 million each from LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman and the Omidyar Network, an investment firm started by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. The Knight Foundation chipped in $5 million. The fund was created to ensure AI research can be influenced by philosophers, ethicists, social scientists and other nonengineering perspectives, according to the Knight Foundation.