Senior AI editor Will Douglas Heaven talks with Tim Bradshaw, FT global tech correspondent, about what our world will look like in the next five years. Welcome back to The State of AI, a new collaboration between the and . You can read the rest of the series here. This is a subscriber-only event and you can sign up here .) Every time I'm asked what's coming next, I get a Luke Haines song stuck in my head: "Please don't ask me about the future / I am not a fortune teller." What will things be like in 2030?

A technology by itself is never enough. In order for it to be of use, it needs to be accompanied by other elements, such as popular understanding, good habits, and acceptance of shared responsibility for its consequences. Without that kind of societal halo, technologies tend to be used ineffectively or incompletely. A good example of this might be the mRNA vaccines created during the COVID epidemic. They were an amazing medical achievement--and yet, because of widespread incomprehension, they didn't land as well as they might have.

Technology use often goes wrong, Parsons notes, "because we're too focused on either our own ideas of what good looks like or on one particular audience as opposed to a broader audience." That may look like an app developer building only for an imagined customer who shares his geography, education, and affluence, or a product team that doesn't consider what damage a malicious actor could wreak in their ecosystem. "We think people are going to use my product the way I intend them to use my product, to solve the problem I intend for them to solve in the way I intend for them to solve it," says Parsons. "But that's not what happens when things get out in the real world." AI, of course, poses some distinct social and ethical challenges. Some of the technology's unique challenges are inherent in the way that AI works: its statistical rather than deterministic nature, its identification and perpetuation of patterns from past data (thus reinforcing existing biases), and its lack of awareness about what it doesn't know (resulting in hallucinations).

Fox News correspondent Grady Trimble has the latest on fears the technology will spiral out of control on'Special Report.' Artificial intelligence is already revolutionizing law enforcement, which has implemented advanced technology in their investigations, but "society has a moral obligation to mitigate the detrimental consequences," a recent study says. AI is in its teenage years, as some experts have said, but law enforcement agencies are already integrating predictive policing, facial recognition and technologies designed to detect gunshots into their investigations, according to a North Carolina State University report published in February. The report was based on 20 semi-structured interviews of law enforcement professionals in North Carolina, and how AI impacts the relationships between communities and police jurisdictions. "We found that study participants were not familiar with AI, or with the limitations of AI technologies," said Jim Brunet, a co-author of the study and director of NC State's Public Safety Leadership Initiative.

We live in a fast-moving world that not long ago would have been considered science fiction. One aspect of technology that has driven us from fantasy into reality is the emergence of autonomous vehicles. Also known as self-driving cars, autonomous vehicles still confuse many people. How does the technology work? And what do we actually mean by work in the context of self-driving cars?

Companies are always looking for practical AI tools to make recruitment easier and more efficient. With increasing numbers of applications to screen, recruiters often struggle to streamline a growing workload, making AI recruiting tools an appealing solution. More companies are turning to automated video interview software to minimize hire time, help recruiters screen more applicants fairly and consistently, and reduce inherent bias in the interview process. No technology can replace the role of a recruiter, however. It's essential to evaluate the effectiveness of AI tools and how they're best used to ensure they'll benefit your hiring practices.

Some of the excesses of 2021 have shown us how digital technologies can undermine what philosophers call future "human flourishing." A lot has been written on this topic in the first few days of the new year, but take two examples -- MIT Technology Review's list of the worst excesses of technology and Fast Company's 5 best and worst tech moments of 2021 -- and it's evident how little power people affected by technologies have when things go wrong under current systems. What's also clear as we enter 2022 is that global tolerance for technology's unchecked disruption of societal institutions, conventions, and values is waning. This is the year governments will pass legislation to control the effects of digital technologies on societies, across many jurisdictions and in relation to numerous existing and emergent technologies. The EU AI and Digital Services Acts, the UK Online Safety Bill, and the US SAFE TECH Act are just a few of the efforts underway. Legislation is a marker of societal concern, but it's also clear that non-specialist, "ordinary" people have an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the relationship between technology and society.

The U.S. and almost all countries today identify AI as a critical strategic area in the future of computing. Companies are more invested than ever in discovering how AI can provide advantages in their competitive markets. According to a report released earlier this year by Appen Limited, AI budgets increased 55% year over year, ranging from $500,000 to $5 million, with more attention placed on internal processes, a better understanding of data and efficiency gains. Fueling this interest are super-accelerated digital transformations driven by a "digital or die" theme mitigating the limitations imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. With digitization, the volume, variety and velocity of data have increased exponentially for many years. Capturing, managing and exploiting the data proved challenging.

The history of technology has shown us that as humans we are constantly trying to create something more intelligent than ourselves. From the first time a human looked at their own reflection and thought'I know I'm here,' to the invention of the computer, our quest for understanding has been one of curiosity and wonder. How might advances in AI impact faith, ethics, and morality as we struggle to comprehend what it means for a machine to be human? The relationship between technology and religion has been central to many discussions about how new technologies may change society: machines that think like people; robots designed by some deity or government agency; nanotechnology used for good (or evil). In this article in particular, we will be focusing on the intersection of religion, technology, and art - particularly the idea of artificial intelligence and faith in relation to music.

The philosopher Mark Coeckelbergh has long been dealing with the development of intelligent machines and their effects on concepts of humanity, societal transformation and the ideology of the trans- and posthuman. His recent book AI Ethics (MIT Press, 2020) provides a survey of the most pressing moral questions opened up by these developments. Should we simply enjoy the new liberties generated by AI as future offers without any alternative? Where does selflessness end with respect to the machinic "other," and where should deliberations about a "trustworthy" AI start? Questions like these are tackled by Coeckelbergh in the following interview.