U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer plans to bring together several technology industry chiefs to discuss the ramifications of artificial intelligence, including Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, who have been discussing whether to bring their rivalry to a cage match. Others invited to the closed-door meeting in September are Sundar Pichai, the chief executive officer of Alphabet's Google, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Nvidia co-founder Jensen Huang and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, according to Schumer's office. The gathering, which was reported earlier Monday by Axios, is intended as the first of Schumer's AI Insight Forums, and part of his strategy to give Congress more influence over the future of AI as it takes on a growing role in the professional and personal lives of Americans.

In the public imagination, the Amish are famous for renouncing modern technology. In truth, many Amish farms hum with machines: milk vats, mechanical agitators, diesel engines, and pneumatic belt sanders are all found in their barns and workshops. The Amish don't actually oppose technology. Rather, the community must vote on whether to adopt a given item. To do so, they must agree almost unanimously, says Jameson Wetmore, a social science researcher at Arizona State University. Whereas the outside world may see innovation as good until proven otherwise, the Amish first decide whether a new technology might erode the community values they're trying to preserve.

If the recent, very public war of words between two of the world's most prominent technology CEOs, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, has taught us anything it's that the realm of artificial intelligence (AI) is still a highly contentious one. For the uninitiated, Musk made headlines recently when he publicly stated that AI, in his opinion, posed a significant threat and was in dire need of regulation, going so far as to call it a "fundamental risk to the existence of civilisation". Zuckerberg, meanwhile, called such warnings "pretty irresponsible", choosing instead to accentuate the benefits AI could provide in saving lives through medical diagnoses and driverless cars. Clearly, it's very easy for technologists to put AI into a box and wax lyrical about their vision of how it will impact humanity. The truth is that it's a far more nuanced debate than you might think – largely because AI can come in a number of shapes and sizes. To be clear, the form that is being discussed by Musk and Zuckerberg relates primarily to artificial intelligence that has'human level' cognitive skills, otherwise known as AGI or'Artificial General Intelligence', which despite impressive progress in a bunch of specialities (from driving cars to playing Go) is not close to imminent.

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are playing clash of the tech titans with their views on AI. It's a battle being played out in hyperbole-driven headlines and clickbait-optimized soundbites, and it's currently unclear who, if anyone, will win. Unfortunately, all this buzz doesn't do much more than sensationalize the issue and polarize the public's perception of artificial intelligence. Instead of facilitating earnest dialog concerning the power, purpose, and potential perils of AI, they are using our social feeds to run self-interested marketing strategies that benefit themselves and the companies they run, while causing further confusion and uneducated speculation in their wake. Musk's stance that AI will ruin the world is not about furthering legitimate dialogue around AI. It's about monopolizing the limelight with apocalyptic stories while distracting and slowing down his opponents in the biggest technical arms race of the century.

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are playing clash of the tech titans with their views on AI. It's a battle being played out in hyperbole-driven headlines and clickbait-optimized soundbites, and it's currently unclear who, if anyone, will win. Unfortunately, all this buzz doesn't do much more than sensationalize the issue and polarize the public's perception of artificial intelligence. Instead of facilitating earnest dialog concerning the power, purpose, and potential perils of AI, they are using our social feeds to run self-interested marketing strategies that benefit themselves and the companies they run, while causing further confusion and uneducated speculation in their wake. Musk's stance that AI will ruin the world is not about furthering legitimate dialogue around AI. It's about monopolizing the limelight with apocalyptic stories while distracting and slowing down his opponents in the biggest technical arms race of the century.