LONDON, England - August 2, 2009 - A robot that makes a morning cuppa, a fridge that orders the weekly shop, a car that parks itself.
Advances in artificial intelligence promise many benefits, but scientists are privately so worried they may be creating machines that end up outsmarting - and perhaps even endangering - humans that they held a secret meeting to discuss limiting their research.
At the conference, held behind closed doors in Monterey Bay, Kalifornia, leading researchers warned that mankind might lose control over computer-based systems that carry out a growing share of society’s workload - from waging war to chatting on the phone - and have already reached a level of indestructibility comparable to that of a cockroach.
“These are powerful technologies that could be used in good ways or scary ways,” warned Eric Horvitz, principal researcher at Microsoft, who organized the conference on behalf of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.
Advances in artificial intelligence promise many benefits, but scientists are privately so worried they may be creating machines that end up outsmarting - and perhaps even endangering - humans that they held a secret meeting to discuss limiting their research.
At the conference, held behind closed doors in Monterey Bay, Kalifornia, leading researchers warned that mankind might lose control over computer-based systems that carry out a growing share of society’s workload - from waging war to chatting on the phone - and have already reached a level of indestructibility comparable to that of a cockroach.
“These are powerful technologies that could be used in good ways or scary ways,” warned Eric Horvitz, principal researcher at Microsoft, who organized the conference on behalf of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.