Echapters
Artificial Intelligence for Better or Worse
AI for better or for worse, or AI at all?
Kobi Leins
“When I was a little girl, I was taught a song about a ball of white string, in which the white string could fix everything – tie a bow on a gift, fly a kite, mend things. The second verse of the song was about all the things that string cannot fix – broken hearts, mend friendships — the list goes on …”
Explainable artificial intelligence:
What were you thinking?
Tim Miller
“Decisions that affect our lives in both trivial and important ways are increasingly being made by algorithms. These algorithms, especially those derived using artificial intelligence (AI), are often inscrutable – at least, they are for now …”
Artificial intelligence and government
Emma Martinho-Truswell and Sabrina Martin
“Artificial intelligence offers a daunting challenge for government: a potent mix of high expectations, big budgets, a competitive international “AI arms race”, and elevated public fears. Some governments, such as China, France and Canada, are determined that their countries be leaders in AI; others have been slower to make public policy statements …”
Artificial intelligence in healthcare
Khoa Cao and Luke Oakden-Rayner
“It may surprise you, but the first dreams of artificial intelligence did not arise in the basements of an MIT engineering lab, or the cosy rooms of an Oxford college. In fact, these dreams did not arise at any modern university or institution. The Iliad, Homer’s epic about the Trojan War, provides the oldest surviving record of a description of artificial intelligence …”
Artificial intelligence and mental health
Grant Blashki and Simon Lock
“When we began to reflect on the role of artificial intelligence (AI) for mental health care, immediately there were a whole range of concerns that leapt out at us. How on earth could a non-living digital device be of value to any human being experiencing mental health issues? Isn’t another human being absolutely essential to provide the compassion and understanding of fellow human beings’ emotions …”
Artificial intelligence and human rights
in Australia
Brett Solomon and Lindsey Andersen
“Although artificial intelligence is already mainstream, experts have only recently started looking into the short- and longterm impacts of AI on human rights. Recently in 2018, artificial intelligence was a key topic at RightsCon, a global conference on the future of the internet hosted by Access Now …”
We must ban killer robots
Toby Walsh
“How will Artificial Intelligence change war? Hollywood has it wrong. It won’t be Terminator, robots with sentience, that transform warfare. It will be much simpler technologies that are, depending on your perspective, at best or at worst less than a decade away. Indeed, it is stupid AI that I fear …”
Complexity is not new: how our own
technological history can teach us about AI
Elizabeth T. Williams, Caitlin M. Bentley, Katherine A. Daniell,
Noel Derwort, Kobi Leins, and Ehsan Nabavi
“What do the words “artificial intelligence” evoke for you? Hopes? Fears? A shiny, personalised future with a place for everyone? A dystopian landscape, peppered with fallen drones and unemployed masses? Or perhaps the term evokes nothing more than the world we already live in …”
Big Brother walks into an office …
Niels Wouters
“A 300% increase in three years; from 200 million in 2017 to 626 million in 2020. This astounding number is the most recent prediction for the total number of surveillance cameras across China (Qiang, 2019). Close to a single camera per 2,000 inhabitants, all fully networked to form the Skynet project – perhaps an awkward name, as Skynet in The Terminator movies attempted to exterminate humanity …”
AI for sustainability: A changing landscape
Ehsan Nabavi, Katherine A. Daniell,
Elizabeth T. Williams and Caitlin M. Bentley
“Artificial intelligence (AI) is impacting society in varied ways as researchers and practitioners are using it to gain new insights into different problems and to open up new business opportunities. Its use has expanded from industry and manufacturing, to areas of sustainability such as land, water, biodiversity, urban transportation, waste, energy supply and housing …”
