Talk at Illinois Institute of Technology - discusses trends in AI, challenges, and promising directions.

1. Artificial Intelligence: Existential
Threat or Our Best Hope for the
Future?
Jim Hendler, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Tetherless World Chair of Computer, Web and Cognitive Sciences
Director, Rensselaer Institute for Data Exploration and Applications
http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~hendler
hendler@cs.rpi.edu
@jahendler

2. Talks I’m not giving today

3. What is the appropriate role for
machine intelligence?
A question that faces us today
Increasingly capable machines are continuing to improve their skills on tasks,
both cognitive and physical, that previously have been the sole province of
humans.
What is the future promise vs. risk, and what should we do about that?

4. Late 20th Century AI criticism

5. BBC: Stephen Hawking warns
artificial intelligence could end
mankind (Dec 2, 2014)
“He told the BBC: The development of full artificial
intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”
"It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at
an ever increasing rate," he said. "Humans, who are
limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't
compete, and would be superseded.
A discussion/response to Stephen Hawking

6. Guardian, 2/9/15
The robot apocalypse
has already started!!

7. AI is improving all the time
J. Schaeffer, 2014

8. AI is improving all the time
AlphaGo (Google) beats Lee Sedol (4th
ranked human) 4-1 March 2016.

9. AIs disallowed
Doctoral thesis
Not even close
Strong amateur
AI winner

10. And it’s not just games anymore
• Gaining new
prominence because
of advances
– Improving robotic
capabilities
• Increasingly able to
integrate in human
society (eg. self-
driving vehicles)

11. I’m sorry
Dave.
Science Fiction - 1968
Today

12. Today: We gain benefit from AI

13. But, the machines still need us…

14. But, the machines still need us…

15. credit: IBM Watson
What about tomorrow?

16. Will machines still need us?

17. Watson: Developers’ view

18. Watson (Blue-J) AI View
• From a research perspective Watson is
interesting in a number of ways
– because of the underlying “cognitive pipeline”
– as a different approach to memory-based reasoning
– as a model of (some aspects) of human cognition
– as the validation of a fundamental AI paradigm

19. AI reasoners and Control flow
Traditional AI systems (rule or logic)
generally work forward from knowledge or
backward from a goal looking “looping”
through possible answers and backtracking
when they cannot find one

21. Simon (‘69) … to Minsky (’88) – ???
• AI as monolithic reasoner/
statistical learner/ …
vs
• AI as collection of small
processes lightly linked and
moderated through learned
contexts

22. Simon (‘69) … to Minsky (‘88) … to
Watson (‘12)
• AI as monolithic reasoner/
statistical learner/ …
vs
• AI as collection of small
processes lightly linked and
moderated through learned
contexts
Re-emerging paradigm in cognitive computing thanks to Watson…

23. IBM points out
The volume of medical
knowledge doubles every five
years
81% of physicians can’t even
space 5hrs/month to keep up
By 2020 doctors will face 200x
the amount of medical data and
facts that a human could process
and proposes that Watson will help.

24. Being a doctor is more than just what
is in the textbooks
Does textbook knowledge overcome experience, intuition and training?

25. Recent break-throughs in machine-learning
“phase transition” in capabilities of neural networks w/machine power

26. Deep-learning Image Recognition

27. Recognition vs. knowledge

28. Recognition vs. knowledge
"If I was telling it to a kid, I'd probably say
something like 'the cat has fur and four legs and
goes meow, the duck is a bird and it swims and
goes quack’. "

29. Adding knowledge?
Which could you sit in?
What is most likely to bite what?
Which one is most likely to become a computer scientist someday?
If you could only save one in an emergency, which would you choose?
…

30. Adding knowledge?
Which could you sit in?
What is most likely to bite what?
Which one is most likely to become a computer scientist someday?
If you could only save one in an emergency, which would you choose?
…

31. Ethics and Responsibilities
• As AI gets more capable and the
interactions increase
– Who is responsible for use of the
technology
• eg. is it the drone or the drone
designer who fires the missile
– What are the ethical dimensions of
machines taking human jobs
• we are heading to a
displacement/disruption similar to
the industrial revolution
• We made it through that, but with a
lot of painful societal change

32. Ethics and Responsibilities
• As AI gets more capable and the
interactions increase
– is it ethical for us to not use machines
where we cannot deploy people?

33. BBC: Stephen Hawking warns
artificial intelligence could end
mankind (Dec 2, 2014)
“He told the BBC: The development of full artificial
intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”
"It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at
an ever increasing rate," he said. "Humans, who are
limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't
compete, and would be superseded.
Done wrong, we do look at a scary possibility

34. Done right, it may be our best hope
• eg. Our knowledge of cancer genomics grows
as cancer continues to spread
• eg. Our neighborhoods degrade as wealth
disparity grows
• eg. Our climate warms as we argue about the
causes without changing behaviors

35. These problems require the best minds of the next generation!

36. These problems require the best minds of the next generation!
Which will likely be both humans and machines.

37. Hendler and Mulvehill, 2016