Questioning AI ethics doesn't make you a gloomy Luddite

Last month, Google-owned DeepMind introduced AlphaGo Zero, the latest evolution of AlphaGo, the first computer programme to defeat a world champion at the ancient Chinese game of Go. Speaking at Web Summit earlier this month, Kevin Bandy, chief digital officer at Cisco, told the audience that "there are more moves in this one game than there are atoms in the universe". A piece of software mastered it in 72 hours, with no human help. This is a narrow application of artificial intelligence (AI), whereby it's focused on perfecting a specific task. It's extraordinary, but things get interesting when we take the debate further.