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United States AI Government IT Technology

White House: AI Holds the Potential To Be a Major Driver of Economic Growth and Social Progress (venturebeat.com) 121

Posted by msmash from the future dept.
A day after the Obama administration outlined its vision and plans to send people to Mars by 2030s, it has now concluded the potential impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on economic growth, transportation, the environment, and criminal justice. "The Administration believes that it is critical that industry, civil society, and government work together to develop the positive aspects of the technology, manage its risks and challenges, and ensure that everyone has the opportunity to help in building an A.I.-enhanced society and to participate in its benefits." VentureBeat adds: The report, dubbed "Preparing for the future of Artificial Intelligence," highlights a number of areas of both opportunity and concern when it comes to A.I. These include:
- The need to adjust regulatory procedures to account for A.I.
- Better coordination and funding of government-led A.I. research initiatives.
- Further study and monitoring of the economic impact of A.I. on jobs.
- "Ethical training" of people in A.I. fields, particularly as the technology is used to control more real-world objects that could lead to concerns about safety and security.
- Creating a clear U.S. policy regarding the development and use of "Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems."
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White House: AI Holds the Potential To Be a Major Driver of Economic Growth and Social Progress More

White House: AI Holds the Potential To Be a Major Driver of Economic Growth and Social Progress

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  • The Computer Says "No" (Score:5, Funny)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Wednesday October 12, 2016 @10:32AM (#53062037)
    >> Dear government, I would like to [exercise my right or receive a benefit]

    COM-PU-TER SAYS "NO"

  • With 'Mission to Mars' and 'AI Singularity' covered, can't be long till there's a mention of a 'US fusion reactor by 20XX' now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z80a ( 971949 )

      Don't worry, there will be special carbon nanotubes that will solve the fusion reactor problem soon.

      But those won't be manufacturable at all for the next 100 namek years.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      can't be long till there's a mention of a 'US fusion reactor by 20XX' now.

      Nah, 20XX is when the autonomous robot labor advances come to a screeching halt from one of the lead researchers overriding normal operations to hold the world for ransom. Fortunately, the other R&D lead will have a built a general-purpose robot butler in his spare time that was not affected.

      • 20XX was the name of the Robot that started a social movement toward equality for Robots. His main speech started with "I have a series of 1s and 0s!"

  • Looks like some have not realized that overpromising is not a good way to get funding and trust in the long term.
    I guess they are not happy with a second AI winter anymore, they are going for a fully fledged AI-iceage.

    Together with the start-up funding bubble that will probably burst (or at least violently deflate) in the future, I predict a double-whammy that will keep people (and particularly money) out of IT and AI in particular for decades to come.

    Startup bubble is not merely naysaying:
    https://www.bloom [bloomberg.com]

    • What can our modern 'AI' do? Deep Mind isn't even turing complete.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • What can our modern 'AI' do? Deep Mind isn't even turing complete.

        Trade securities as fast as the network latencies allow, as they have been doing for several years now.

        Sluggish humans can only trail along distantly in their wake.

        • That's not AI, that's front-running.

          • Front-running is where a broker gets an order from a customer and makes the same trade on his own account first, before it can move the price.

            Nothing directly related to HFT. You could do it with pen and paper, and no doubt back in the olden days they did.

            • No, that's basically what they are doing. There are multiple exchanges. Ideally, the order will go out on all of them at once, but of course, there are millisecond delays. HFT sees the order come in on one exchange, then jumps quickly to the next exchange and makes the deal first.

  • Economic growth (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Wednesday October 12, 2016 @10:40AM (#53062133)

    The benefits of that economic growth will almost exclusively go to billionaires who contribute to to their campaigns and foundations. So, yeah, they're pretty happy about it.

    • Until our AIs figure out how to game the stock market! Except then the economy collapses and we'll wish we'd built killbots instead of day-trader bots.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by zlives ( 2009072 )

        just get started on the killbot then, the future is nigh as AI is almost around the corner. also invest in the flying pig delivery system.

      • Until our AIs figure out how to game the stock market! Except then the economy collapses and we'll wish we'd built killbots instead of day-trader bots.

        Remember the flash-crashes? Wall Street AI was CREATED to game the stock market.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dargaud ( 518470 )
      This is entirely up to the laws to keep in check. Look, there aren't too many ways to do this. You either mount a revolution, kill the rich or despoil them (like during the French revolution) and reboot the system with new laws. Or you tweak the laws, for instance with heavy taxes on the rich, so that there's redistribution and no multi-generational accumulations of riches and land.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ranton ( 36917 )

      The benefits of that economic growth will almost exclusively go to billionaires who contribute to to their campaigns and foundations.

      And just like today, one of the political parties will confuse the issue by starting an anti-AI bandwagon just like we see done with anti-Globalization today. Instead of dealing with the income inequality created by AI (like with globalization) they will distract voters by blaming the technology. And then you'll have a new generation of politicians pretending they can put the genie back in the bottle just to get votes from the uneducated while still keeping their donors happy.

  • We would probably be better off if we replaced POTUS and Congress with AI but as far as an industry goes I doubt it will do much for workers in the US. Most professional code is being copy/pasted by outsourced labor or visa maggots so no new jobs for US citizens. What could be worse is that if successful the AI would certainly be taking over jobs in the US.

  • "Social progress"?!?!?! That's SCARY (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "Social progress" has become nothing more than a competition to claim the largest share of victimhood while calling anyone who doesn't agree with you a "hater".

    And then doing every damn thing you can to silence those "haters".

    • "Social progress" is a code word for piping as much money as possible through the government (making it available for the taking by the ruling class) while simultaneously making most of the country dependent on government handouts (making the ruling class permanent). I've got to give it to them, it's a devious, highly cynical strategy that seems to be working so far.

  • - "Ethical training" of people in A.I. fields, particularly as the technology is used to control more real-world objects that could lead to concerns about safety and security.

    Doctors & lawyers receive ethical training, yet we still have a lot of unethical doctors & lawyers. If we created a "sentient" A.I., what's to say that it wouldn't find some way to get around its ethical programming by the people ethically trained to create it? Don't forget about Microsoft's recent venture [arstechnica.com].

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by m00sh ( 2538182 )

      - "Ethical training" of people in A.I. fields, particularly as the technology is used to control more real-world objects that could lead to concerns about safety and security.

      Doctors & lawyers receive ethical training, yet we still have a lot of unethical doctors & lawyers. If we created a "sentient" A.I., what's to say that it wouldn't find some way to get around its ethical programming by the people ethically trained to create it? Don't forget about Microsoft's recent venture [arstechnica.com].

      Ethical training of people in A.I.

      Not ethical training of A.I.

      • what's to say that it wouldn't find some way to get around its ethical programming by the people ethically trained to create it?

        Ethical training of people in A.I.

        Not ethical training of A.I.

        Yes, I got it. I added emphasis above for your sake. And why would we want those people to have ethics training? So that they don't give the A.I. the ability to do unethical things. My point is that if the A.I. is truly intelligent, it should be able to figure out a way to overcome that obstacle if there is some sort of conflicting goal it wants to accomplish.

  • - Further study and monitoring of the economic impact of A.I. on jobs.

    I really doubt the government will have the best interest of all people, so long as the wealthy donors benefit... it's working.

    - Creating a clear U.S. policy regarding the development and use of "Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems."

    "It was justified based on the algorithms determination that this was a credible threat, despite the fact it was an elementary school. The regulatory AI agrees."

  • And put it the fuck in charge. One AI = one grownup on planet Earth.

    We'll be dead before we can do that, of course.

    It isn't even a net loss if it fucking Skynets us, we're going to fucking do that ourselves anyway.

    • I'm really, really glad that you, or someone like you, isn't the one making the high-level decisions on things like this.

  • AI is a catchall term, like "the Cloud" (Score:3)

    by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Wednesday October 12, 2016 @11:22AM (#53062463)

    Politicians and wonks aren't referring specifically to the Turing definition of Artificial Intelligence. To them, and to much of the public, AI encompasses everything from HAL-like sentience that may take decades to appear, (or might be just around the corner, depending on which pundit you listen to), down to Siri, factory automation, and self-driving cars. And when these more mundane things are included in "AI", then preparing for the economic, social, psychological, and ethical fallout coming in the near future [slashdot.org] might be a pretty good idea [marshallbrain.com].

  • Of course, I think it provides far MORE potential for pernicious harm and ruin.

    The bad guys are far more numerous, and have better incentives, than the good guys, in terms of the Wild West of cyberwarfare. At the moment, the initiative belongs to the attacker.

    Furthermore, we have a society WEDDED to the idea that every flippin' power station, every traffic light, every car, even the bloody coffeemakers "should" be connected to the web. The overwhelming bulk of these are woefully un- or under-protected, an

  • Ed Dillinger: What do you want with the Pentagon?
    Master Control Program: The same thing I want with the Kremlin. I'm bored with corporations. With the information I can access, I can run things 900 to 1200 times better than any human.
    Ed Dillinger: If you think you're superior to us...
    Master Control Program: You wouldn't want me to dig up Flynn's file and read it up on a VDT at the Times, would you?

    I'm not sure that AI has to be self-aware, but if it does... It could get ugly quick. And it wouldn't be j

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Why would it be any different than with e.g. a robot that replaces workers. If you have 10 people working at 40 hours, replacing 5 workers by a machines does not mean that they now work each 20 hours at the same pay (minus the cost of the machine).

      I think they were talking about government workers, so the math is more like 10 people present for 40 hours but working about 5-10. The goal is to change this to 20 people present for 40 hours but working about 15 min. And they all want to retire at age 40 with full benefits. They never want nor plan on savings.

  • Are they talking about Al Gore? He did invent the internet, which has been a major economic driver.

  • Our education system is currently setup for skills needed for factory working, and humdrum office jobs and research. These are the things AI can replace. Our education system will need to be revamped for more creativity, and adaptive thinking, and problem solving jobs.

  • Why is this in quotes? By "ethics training" you mean..."take over the world"?

  • Creating a clear U.S. policy (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Creating a clear U.S. policy regarding the development and use of "Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems."

    I can help you with that:
    "Don't build them, don't buy them, don't sell them, don't use them."
    There you are. I waive my consultant fee for this one.

  • AI will help identify where the people who hold counter revolutionary views are, so they can be taxed differently.

    Currently it takes a lot of manual effort from the IRS to pin this down, and other departments have to ask them about it. This is also a nuisance since it is technically against the law. AI will just make it that much more efficient.

    Once the public warms up to reeducation (or even maybe calling it that openly) we can close the loop.

  • Expected Rush response: "See, he wants to automate his mass gun grabbing!"

  • So, is Congress and the President being replaced by AI? That may, indeed, have the effect of economic growth and social progress.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by JustNiz ( 692889 )

      Exactly my thought. You can bet as soon as government jobs start to look replaceable, the Governments position on AI will suddenly change to outright hostile.
      Especially if it looks like AI would do a better job (which is inevitable simply if it is designed to do whats best for the people rather than be corrupt).

  • While life becomes more and more like a game of Paranoia

  • AI is 100% of the best thing that could ever happen in this world. But the transition will cause a lot of misery without government and society getting certain concepts and rejecting many belief systems now held too firmly. for example the concept of working for a living is really about to vanish. Major trades are about to vanish and we are only at the beginning of what is about to take place. Yet just about nobody is doing a thing to make the transition easy and comfortable for the masses. Right now s
  • Just as in pharmaceutics, where most of the research comes from public grants and then successful drug research is taken over by private industry, AI and robotics has been largely developed with government grants funded by the tax payer.
    The same thing also happened with space exploration. Most of the research and development came from the general public. I will say that the major reason that the US went to the moon was to explore its mineral content. This was outright stated by the astronauts, as th
    • The biggest use of AI will be in keeping track of dissidence.
      As brought out in an earlier SD article, Facebook, Twitter and others turn over photos and postings of people over to the police. This is great for data-mining and record keeping. Add to this the fact that most of our cloths and merchandise have RFID anti-shop-lifting tags, it is easy to trace you based on you passing through shopping checkouts and video surveillance. Even if you decide to yank off every RFID tag and avoid video cameras and
  • AI has been the next big thing around the corner for fifty years. I would not be surprised if, in fifty years, it still thing the next big thing around the corner.
  • Gist is....I want to sit on a few company boards after I leave office and lobby for Google. Here's my lobby pitch in advance. We've got lots of problems. I even created a few of my own, so I know the right people. If you are a prospective employer, let me know ASAP if you have any corrections you would like to make, so we have plenty of runway.

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