Artificial intelligence has come a long way since the term was coined in the 1950s, but computers still don’t think and feel in quite the same way humans do. Yet rapid progress has the federal government, and others, thinking about new legal and policy issues.
Artificial intelligence has been around for decades. Think airplanes that fly on auto-pilot. Today, that technology is developing quickly, thanks to breakthroughs in computer science. This week, the White House and the University of Washington will co-host a public workshop to look at risks associated with the technology.
Some of these center around safety. For example, how will we know when self-driving cars are ready to hit the streets? And then there are questions about accountability and transparency.
UW Law Professor Ryan Calo, says imagine you’ve been placed on no-fly list.
“It’s not as though there’s some dossier that you could look at and see exactly what’s going on. It’s the result of artificial intelligence in that sense, combing through lots of information and spitting out a likelihood that you’re a problem,” he said. “How do you appeal that? What recourse do you have?”
Calo says some worry that artificial intelligence could run amok and even harbor ill will against humans. But he says he sees no evidence of that. Calo and his cohorts in computer science see this as an opportune time to look at how technology will affect society, and what role the government should play.
