That idea is not without its detractors. Among other issues, many feel AI is not capable of the creative thought needed in research, makes too many mistakes and hallucinations, and may limit opportunities for young researchers. Nevertheless, a number of scientists and policymakers are very keen on the promise of AI scientists. The US government's AI Action Plan describes the need to "invest in automated cloud-enabled labs for a range of scientific fields." Some researchers think AI scientists could unlock scientific discoveries that humans could never find alone.

Many companies are working to build AGI (artificial general intelligence), defined as "AI that can learn and perform most intellectual tasks that human beings can, including AI development." Below we'll discuss why this may rapidly lead to superintelligence, defined as "general intelligence far beyond human level". I'm often told that AGI and superintelligence won't happen because it's impossible: human-level Intelligence is something mysterious that can only exist in brains. Such carbon chauvinism ignores a core insight from the AI revolution: that intelligence is all about information processing, and it doesn't matter whether the information is processed by carbon atoms in brains or by silicon atoms in computers. AI has been relentlessly overtaking humans on task after task, and I invite carbon chauvinists to stop moving the goal posts and publicly predict which tasks AI will never be able to do.

While Bilenko's short purple pixie haircut wasn't particularly notable amongst the diverse team that brought Dr. Brainlove to Burning Man, it did cause her to stand out when she attended scientific conferences. "AI is a profession that excludes a lot of people from participating, and that's a huge problem," she says. Chatting with a handful of non-binary and queer scientists among the thousands attending a key research conference in the field, they brainstormed how to address these issues. Since then, Queer in AI members have worked to become a more visible presence in the larger AI community, returning to that conference and others each year to host social gatherings, lead mentoring sessions, and give research talks. Through their original research and advocacy, they encourage and highlight new findings to address various concerns, such as the ethical use of AI, privacy and safety, and how binary-based model assumptions can harm members of the queer community.

For the second year in a row, Canada has refused visas to dozens of researchers - most of them from Africa - who were hoping to attend an artificial intelligence (AI) conference in Vancouver. The hassles have caused at least one other AI conference to choose a different country for their next event. The Neural Information Processing Systems conference (NeurIPS), which brings together thousands of experts and researchers from all over the world, will be held in Vancouver next month. Last week, NeurIPS began hearing that several attendees had had their visas denied. It was the second year in a row the conference has had visa troubles.