For sure, 2015 was a major year for advancements in artificial intelligence, marked by events such the first autonomously driven car. The state of AI today and moving forward provided ample fodder for a fascinating panel discussion at this year's World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Here are some of the highlights of the talk, which featured some of the leading minds in AI today.
From Reading to Understanding
While self-driving cars got plenty of attention last year, some of the most notable advances in AI of late center on the legal profession, noted Andrew Moore, dean of Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science. While natural language processing of legal documents for e-discovery and other purposes is hardly a new idea, many companies are applying more advanced machine learning techniques to areas such as contract analysis and the outcome of IP litigation.
Overall, the goal isn't to replace lawyers, but rather to "take away the boring parts of white collar work," such as the drudgery of reading thousands or even millions of documents, Moore said.
Meanwhile, another hot area of AI is personal assistants such as Apple's Siri. The software is "cute, but doesn't really understand what you're saying," said UC Berkeley Prof. Stuart Russell, another notable figure in the world of AI research. "It's more like a prepared set of answers to a prepared set of questions."
But what if personal assistant applications like Siri could do much more?
The well-to-do are used to having personal assistants who manage the finer details of their daily schedules and lives, Russell noted.
"Imagine a very professional personal assistant who knows everything going on in your life and can say, 'You should really cancel that appointment because something more important needs to be done,' or 'Don't worry, I've taken care of the electric bill," he said. "That capability could be incredibly valuable for people with much fewer economic resources because they're the ones who really face a struggle navigating the complicated world, working two jobs, being a single parent and all the rest. This technology could be a boon for billions of people around the world."
The 'Dark Side' of AI
One longstanding concern about in both popular culture and research circles is the prospect of building a system that becomes fully autonomous, self-aware and more powerful than humans.
It may be tempting to use factors such as Moore's Law to determine when such a system could be built, but the fact is that "breakthroughs are hard to predict," Russell said. "Sometimes it can go from 'never' or 'impossible,' to happening in less than 24 hours. What I would argue is the possible risks from building systems that are more intelligent than us are not immediate, but the need to start thinking about how keeping them under control, and beneficial to us? That research has to start happening now."
At Carnegie Mellon, faculty and students often worry about the risks of super-sophisticated AI systems, Moore said. "But the reason they're so passionate is that they see ways to save lives right now," whether it's by reducing the number of deaths from auto accidents or giving poor people the ability to get medical advice from a smart system." The school's main focus with narrow or domain-specific AI projects is "to make them safe and working like they're supposed to," he said. "The existential questions about AI and superhuman robots are up there with things like the grey goo caused by nanotechnology or broadcasting outside the solar system and aliens coming to get us."
Russell, Moore and other panelists had a great deal else to say about the state of AI. You can view the entire presentation below.
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