Race for AI is making Hindenburg-style disaster'a real risk', says leading expert The race to get artificial intelligence to market has raised the risk of a Hindenburg-style disaster that shatters global confidence in the technology, a leading researcher has warned. Michael Wooldridge, a professor of AI at Oxford University, said the danger arose from the immense commercial pressures that technology firms were under to release new AI tools, with companies desperate to win customers before the products' capabilities and potential flaws are fully understood. The surge in AI chatbots with guardrails that are easily bypassed showed how commercial incentives were prioritised over more cautious development and safety testing, he said. "It's the classic technology scenario," he said. "You've got a technology that's very, very promising, but not as rigorously tested as you would like it to be, and the commercial pressure behind it is unbearable."

California-based automaker Rivian markets its high-end electric trucks to climate-conscious consumers hoping to do right by the planet. Now, the firm has applied to earn carbon credits for the chargers that power its pickups and SUVs, including those installed in its customers' homes, MIT Technology Review can reveal. The move raises new questions about who deserves the credit: the person who buys a $75,000 electric pickup or an $800 charger, or the company that manufactures and sells those products? And if those benefits can be quantified, should they be bought by individuals or businesses hoping to cancel out their own ongoing pollution? It's time to talk about the real AI risks Unsurprisingly, AI was the topic on everyone's lips at the world's biggest digital rights conference last week.

Much has been written about the importance of internal document digitisation and automation with the significant improvement in operational efficiencies it brings to organisations worldwide. The last few years has seen it quickly cement itself as vital for business efficiencies, productivity, and the knock-on effect of this on a business's bottom line. The automation of internal processes and operations is vital. However, we need to pay cognizance to the equal importance of ensuring that these same efficiencies are implemented across both inbound and outbound documents and processes. Manually retrieving data from inbound documents and entering it into your company's ERP system can be tedious and time-consuming.

A former Google engineer made waves this past month with claims the tech company's new chat bot feature gained sentience, but technology experts say there are other, more concerning risks artificial intelligence poses to society. Blake Lemoine received pushback when he argued the bot, known as LaMDA, or Language Model for Dialogue Applications, is now capable of feeling. He was placed on leave in June after giving documents to a Senate committee, claiming the bot discriminated against people on the basis of religion, among other biases. Lemoine was fired this past month for what the company says is violating data security policies, but he still believes LaMDA poses a problem as AI becomes more engrained in society. "These are just engineers, building bigger and better systems for increasing the revenue into Google with no mindset towards ethics," Lemoine told Insider earlier this week, referring to what he believes is Google's lack of preparation for a technology that gains personhood.

The UK's newly launched national strategy will help keep the UK competitive as AI transforms businesses and jobs The power of AI to drive growth and innovation is clear, evidenced by the McKinsey Global Survey on AI that suggests that organisations are using AI as a tool for generating value, increasingly, in the form of revenues. But the black box approach taken by most AI companies comes with serious risks to scale bias like never before, intentional or not. As part of any AI strategy, diverse teams must be part of the process from the ground up to recognise biases in the data on which models are trained and to scenario plan how minorities may be impacted. Ensuring AI is explainable with a greater degree of transparency in training data, data gaps, and algorithmic logic can further reduce bias at scale. These are the key ways to mitigate this very real risk.

The chief concern plaguing AI scientists in 2021 isn't a Skynet scenario, or that AI will get too advanced, but that tech companies will use our current, limited algorithms as a band-aid for complex social issues, according to a new report. The report, the second installation in Stanford University's study of artificial intelligence advancement, uses the term "techno-solutionism" to brand this specific line of thinking, and warns AI is a mathematical tool rather than panacea. Stanford's study is slated to last 100 years, as it's officially called the "One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence," and plans to report findings every five years. "Technology often creates larger problems in the process of solving smaller ones," the authors write. "For example, systems that streamline and automate the application of social services can quickly become rigid and deny access to migrants or others who fall between the cracks."

We often hear about the positive aspects of artificial intelligence (AI) security -- the way it can predict what customers need through data and deliver a custom result. When the darker side of AI is discussed, the conversation often centers on data privacy. Other conversations in this area veer into science fiction where the AI works of its own volition: "Open the pod bay doors, HAL." But a concerning trend is emerging in the real world: an increase in AI-enabled cyberattacks. Cybersecurity experts are becoming more concerned about AI attacks, both now and in the near future.

There is a "real risk" that the growth of automation and increased use of artificial intelligence will see communities across Scotland left behind, Nicola Sturgeon has warned. Speaking at the Wellbeing Economy Alliance conference, the first minister said the growth of new technology will bring new opportunities for Scotland, but that their introduction must be carefully managed to ensure that the benefits are shared. The Scottish Government has worked with the Scottish Trades Union Congress to examine the effects of new technologies on the economy and workforce, with a joint 2018 report finding "there is a plausible case that the technological change in the 21st century could pose new and serious challenges in sustaining a labour market that supports broadly based prosperity". Appearing in Edinburgh, Sturgeon said her government aimed to create an economy where "collective wellbeing" was as fundamental as GDP, but warned that the movement to a low-carbon economy and the growth of new technologies would also pose challenges for communities and workers. The SNP leader said: "As we moved to increased use of technology, such as artificial intelligence, there is again a big potential for real economic benefit, particularly for country like Scotland, and for a city like Edinburgh, where there is already a very strong, vibrant and growing tech sector. But there are also a range of ethical questions to confront. There is also a real risk that as we make that transition, individuals and communities are left behind, so we must work now to make sure that does not happen."

Since robots and machines have been incorporated into our lives, we have always lived with the question of will the robot rise and take over humans? We see it in films and TV but could it become a possibility one day? The field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is growing, rapidly. AI and Machine Learning is becoming a part of our lives, and while at the moment there doesn't seem to be much of a threat I want to take a look at whether AI can go too far and if there are already warning signs of this happening. It was only at the beginning of the month that it was reported that Facebook had to shut down its AI bots as they started communicating with each other in their own language.

Sorry, science fiction fans, but the "replicants" of the Blade Runner saga or the "terminators" of the eponymous action movie franchise are not on the horizon. "Don't imagine human-like, humanoid robots when you think of the future of robots," said Kim Sang-bae, the world-renowned robot scientist who developed a four-legged walking robot called "Cheetah," which has gained widespread media exposure. Not only is it impossible to develop human-like robots now, it may remain impossible in the future, according to Kim, a mechanical engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While the ultimate stage of robotics may, indeed, be creating machines that can think and work on their own, there is a yawning gap between where robot technologies stand now and that final-stage development. In an interview with Asia Times, Kim predicted that the robot industry would continue to expand by creating robots which can do very specific things better than humans. But he conceded there is a real risk that the social inequalities in the sector will accelerate.