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http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s00146-016-0685-0&domain=pdf
Web End = AI & Soc (2017) 32:285287 DOI 10.1007/s00146-016-0685-0
http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s00146-016-0685-0&domain=pdf
Web End = BOOK REVIEW
Preparing for the future of Articial Intelligence
Alan Bundy1
Published online: 29 November 2016 Springer-Verlag London 2016
In October 2016, the US National Science and Technology Council published a report on Articial Intelligence (AI) (United States 2016) that summarised evidence from a wide variety of sources on how they expect AI to develop, what impact it would have and what actions it recommended the US Government to take. It built on several previous US Government reports, e.g. United States (2014, 2016), and consulted widely among AI experts in the USA, e.g. Horvitz and Selman (2009) and ve workshops. A companion document has also been published: The National Articial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan, which lays out a strategic plan for federally funded research and development in AI.
Overall, this is a comprehensive report, which I recommend to anyone wanting a balanced review of the state of the AI art, its potential impact and what ethical, economic and societal issues it presents. It does, of course, duck some of the more difcult issuesor rather recommend that someone else considers them in detail.
This concern about AI is, of course, triggered by the phenomenal recent successes of mainly statistical machine learning in games (Chess, Go and Jeopardy), self-driving cars, automated assistants (Apple Siri, Amazon Alexa, Google Now and Microsoft Cortana). The other main driver is the worry that Articial General Intelligence (AGI) will exceed human intelligence and supplant us as the dominant species on the Earththe, so-called, Singularity.
The report wisely ignores concerns about the Singularity, claiming that, if it occurs at all, its a long way in the future, and that the immediate actions should be the same whether or not it occurs. It points out that the AI successes have been in, what it calls, narrow AI, i.e. often superhuman performance in a very narrow task, e.g. playing Go. I call...