Anna Connell: Overcoming our Artificial fears

If you asked people about Artificial Intelligence, most, if they had an idea of what it was, would likely respond with concerns about the rise of the robots, job losses, sentient machine armies, privacy and transparency. You only need to look at the comments about Boston Dynamics back-flipping robot this week to see how quickly we get dystopian about the prospect of advances in this area. Dave Heiner, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of the Regulatory Affairs team at Microsoft, sees things a bit differently. His main concern is we're not deploying it fast enough. It's a surprising statement from a man whose job contains the words'regulatory affairs' but he's a self-proclaimed AI convert and has spent the last few years contemplating all manner of issues in relation to AI including data privacy, ethics, transparency and trust, and has been advising Microsoft, as well as governments and organisations on behalf of Microsoft, on AI policy frameworks and regulation.