Artificial intelligence: Friend or foe for building a better future? - Issuu

In 2015, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and the late Stephen Hawking were rather incongruously nominated for the 2015 Luddite Award -- an honor bestowed by the Information Technology & Information Foundation for "The Worst of the Year's Worst Innovation Killers." Musk, Gates and Hawking -- along with many others -- had expressed growing concerns over the potential risks of naïve and irresponsible developments in artificial intelligence, commonly referred to as AI. In spite of their collective technological optimism, the speed of recent advances had them running scared. Six years on, the debate over the potential risks of AI, and how to ensure its ethical and responsible development and use, is fiercer than ever -- so much so that the White House has just committed to developing a "bill of rights" to guard against the inappropriate use of AI and similarly powerful tech. Yet, as with many technology trends, the challenges and opportunities AI presents are more complex than they may at first seem.