DeepMind's Mysterious Ethics Board Will Reportedly 'Control' AGI If It's Ever Created

DeepMind's ethics board has been a closely guarded secret ever since the artificial intelligence company was acquired by Google in 2014. But a new report from Hal Hodson at The Economist sheds some light on how the ethics board came about and what it's there for. DeepMind and Google signed an agreement drawn up by lawyers in London called the "Ethics and Safety Review Agreement" in the year leading up to the acquisition, according to the report. This agreement states that if DeepMind ever succeeds in its core mission of building artificial general intelligence (AGI)-- sometimes described as a machine that can successfully complete any intellectual task that a human can, and widely thought of as the holy grail in AI -- then the control of that machine will lie with those on a governing panel known as the Ethics Board, according to the report. The Ethics Board essentially allows DeepMind to legally maintain a degree of control over the technology it creates, no matter how valuable or dangerous it becomes, according to the report.