Artificial intelligence has one big weakness: The humans who create and shape it

Artificial intelligence is quickly being deployed into many areas of business and society, but experts and the companies that build the technology are urging policy-makers to be wary of it's biggest weakness: the humans that design and shape it. "The obligation that we all have as the producers and consumers of this technology is to take a step back and actually start to get a deeper understanding of some of the consequences that can happen," said Norm Judah, chief technology officer for Microsoft Services, the global branch of the Seattle-based tech giant that handles business and consumer software-based offerings such as the Azure cloud platform, AI and Office365. Judah said in an interview that rapid advances in cloud computing and algorithms have accelerated the technology to the point that policy is needed to address potential ethical conflicts. "AI systems that learn are organic and continue to learn … but with lack of governance and guidance they can actually start to inherit and build biases," he said. Unlike automation, where systems are simply told to do specific repetitive tasks, the nature of AI is to find patterns, learn from experience and make decisions based on a large volume of data.