As quantum computing moves into the mainstream, are we doing enough to safeguard this technology?
A few years ago, many people imagined a world run by robots. The promises and challenges associated with artificial intelligence (AI) were widely discussed as this technology moved out of the labs and into the mainstream. Many of these predictions seemed contradictory. Robots were mooted to steal our jobs, but also create millions of new ones. As more applications were rolled out, AI hit the headlines for all the right (and wrong) reasons, promising everything from revolutionizing the healthcare sector to making light of the weight of data now created in our digitized world. But, from Amazon’s sexist AI recruiting tool to racial bias and Tesla’s driverless car crash, many other examples of the pitfalls of poorly implemented AI soon appeared.
“AI will not live up to its promise if the public loses confidence in it as a result of privacy violations, bias, or malicious use, or if much of the world comes to blame it for exacerbating inequality,” analyst house McKinsey warned in 2018. Fast forward to 2021 and the Institute for Ethics in AI was set up at the University of Oxford with many similar initiatives now appearing to tackle the issues of how we can use AI in an ethical and safe manner. AI is not the first technology to undergo this push-and-pull between revolutionizing and/or destroying the world. As the Institute for Ethics in AI website states: “Philosophers made a major contribution to the development of medical ethics 40 years ago, and we are now at a tipping point where a similar ethical intervention is needed to cope with the questions raised by the rise of AI.”
Tim Berners-Lee also envisioned that his invention could, in the wrong hands, become a destroyer of worlds. He has spent most of his life trying to guard the internet against those looking to exploit it.
“While the web has created opportunity, given marginalized groups a voice, and made our daily lives easier, it has also created opportunity for scammers, given a voice to those who spread hatred, and made all kinds of crime easier to commit,” Berners-Lee said in 2018, reflecting on his invention for the worldwide web’s 30th anniversary.
