Duke Experts Talk Artificial Intelligence With Congressional Staff

Increased federal funding and ethical inquiry are needed to best develop America's artificial intelligence capabilities, argued three Duke experts in a congressional briefing on Capitol Hill on Feb. 15. Duke Professors Vincent Conitzer, Nita Farahany and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong spoke broadly about the ethical implications of what the advent of A.I. means for medicine, lethal weapons, automobiles and unemployment. Conitzer's presentation offered a definition of A.I., Sinnott-Armstrong explored the ethics of lethal autonomous weapons and Farahany dove into the legal questions A.I. will challenge. Artificially intelligent systems already excel at games of probability and prediction but fail at games of context and interpretation, said Conitzer in his presentation. This program began a three-part Duke in DC series for congressional staff exploring policy implications for human-A.I. collaboration.