The world's first psychopath AI serves as a reminder that although newer, improved, and increasingly complex algorithms continue to be developed, the need for good, unbiased data will always be paramount. The Rorschach test, named after its creator Hermann Rorschach, is a psychological test that uses a subject's interpretation of a series of ambiguous inkblots to assess her personality, emotional tendencies, and mental biases. Depending on a person's perception of the different, seemingly abstract patterns, psychologists are said to gain insights into her thinking process. Although different people perceive the ten images (that make up the test) in different ways, people with mental disorders, such as schizophrenia and psychopathy, come up with extraordinarily skewed and, sometimes, morbid interpretations of these blotted patterns. For instance, for an image that normally would evoke responses such as'a moth' or'a bat', a psychopathic response would be something like "pregnant woman falls at construction story".

An interesting question about artificial intelligence was raised by Lenore Kerrigan, the country sales director for enterprise information management group, OpenText, in an article she wrote in Business Tech. She points out that AI is here to stay, and it will get better and more powerful as time goes on. And AI, along with autonomous devices, is transforming the way we do our banking, run our businesses, and other sectors, altering basic operational and decision making within the organization yet improving efficiency and response times. Kerrigan cites the Davos 2018 World Economic Forum meeting, held earlier this year where world leaders debated the ethics of AI, with UK Prime Minister Theresa May launching the UK's Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation. German chancellor Angela Merkel addreses the annual World Economic Forum on January 24, 2018 in Davos, eastern Switzerland Fabrice COFFRINI, AFP/File The primary objective of this advisory body is to work with international partners in reaching common ground on understanding "how to ensure the safe, ethical and innovative deployment of AI." Who will guard the guardsmen?

Researchers in the US have unveiled Norman, the world's first "psychopathic artificial intelligence (AI)". The project from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) aims to show how algorithms are made and make people aware of AI's potential dangers. Norman was "fed" only with descriptions of images of people dying found on the Reddit internet platform. Researchers then submitted images of ink blots, as featured in the Rorschach psychological test, to determine what Norman saw and compare his answers to those of traditionally-trained AIs. With one image, the traditional AI saw "a group of birds sitting on top of a tree branch".

Researchers said Norman's dark responses illustrate the harsh reality of machine learning.

'Norman,' a new algorithm created by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sees the negative--to the extreme--as compared to "normal" algorithms generated by artificial intelligence. Where a regular algorithm sees a group of birds sitting atop a tree, Norman sees someone being electrocuted. An image that a non-psychopathic algorithm sees as a group of people standing by a window is viewed as someone jumping from the window by Norman. The MIT team created Norman as part of an experiment to see what training AI on data from the "dark corners of the net" would do to its worldview, reports the BBC. Among the images the software was shown were people dying in horrible circumstances, culled from a group on Reddit.