An ethicist explains his 4 chief concerns about artificial intelligence

Elon Musk's warning about artificial intelligence (AI) and Facebook bots' creation of a language that humans can't understand can conjure images of robots conquering the world in one's mind. While such an apocalypse may be far-fetched, a more realistic consequence of AI already exists and warrants serious concern: AI's ethical impact. AI works, in part, because complex algorithms adeptly identify, remember, and relate data. Although such machine processing has existed for decades, the difference now is that very powerful computers process terabytes of data and deliver meaningful results in real-time. Moreover, some machines can do what had been the exclusive domain of humans and other intelligent life: Learn on their own. It's this automated learning that introduces a critical question: Can machines learn to be moral?