Artificial Intelligence
| The 'inventor's inventor' Danny Hillis recently spoke about artificial intelligence at the Aspen Ideas Festival about his work, the future and what happens when machines start using moral thinking. |
At the Aspen Ideas Festival, computer science and artificial intelligence pioneer, Danny Hillis was interviewed by the Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal.
Hillis is an inventor, scientist, author and engineer. While completing his doctorate at MIT, he pioneered the concept of parallel computers that is now the basis for most supercomputers, as well as the RAID array.
For Hillis, there are two amazing things in the world: life and thinking. He has based his life on examining these complex phenomenon. "Those are the ultimate things to make."
He holds over 100 US patents, covering parallel computers, disk arrays, forgery prevention methods, and various electronic and mechanical devices, and has recently been working on problems in medicine as well. He is also the designer of a 10,000-year mechanical clock, and he famously gave a TED Talk in 1994 that is practically prophetic. Throughout his career, Hillis has worked at places like Disney and now Applied Minds, always looking for the next fascinating problem.
Hillis starts by reviewing some of the history of AI from cybernetics, classical AI, neural networks and Big Data. He states that the biggest change over the years is that "we have changed what we think of as thinking."
Another change Hillis mentions is that people used to be very threatened by artificial intelligence. When Gary Kasparov fell to IBMs Deep Blue in chess, for instance people were very upset. Now things are very different. When Watson won on Jeopardy!, the crowd was actually cheering for the computer.
Madrigal mentions Brad Templeton's Whistlecars when the conversation turns to self-driving cars. For Hillis, a lot of the explanation of why we are now seeing the emergence of self-driving cars is based on Moore's Law—computers have just gotten faster. "We are now able to implement the ideas that we have had for a long time."
Proteomics is another area that Hillis has done a lot of work in. Using artificial intelligence to monitor the body and your health is really going to become ubiquitous he foresees.
An interesting discussion about the moral thinking capability of AI. "I think that if we are going to have intelligent machines, then moral intelligence is certainly a critical part of intelligence," states Hillis. "We are certainly not going to trust machines with certain kinds of judgements unless they do have some kind of moral intelligence. We are sort of in an interesting situation that we get to, to a certain extent, to prescribe the moral intelligence, but I guess we are in that same situation when we teach our children."
"One of the interesting things about artificial intelligence, is that you get to see your models reflected back at you," continues Hillis. "One of the things that usually becomes obvious is that you tell the machine a certain way, then it does, then you realize, oh that wasn't what I meant at all." Hillis suspects that as we try to teach machines moral intelligence, that we will in fact learn what moral behavior should actually be. "We are going to learn about morality by making our machines more moral."
The Aspen Ideas Festival is the nation's premier, public gathering place for leaders from around the globe and across many disciplines to engage in deep and inquisitive discussion of the ideas and issues that both shape our lives and challenge our times. Some 350 presenters, 200 sessions, and 3000 attendees comprise the annual Festival, launched in 2005, on the Aspen Institute's campus in Aspen, Colorado.
The Aspen Institute produces the Aspen Ideas Festival in concert with its partner, The Atlantic. The mission of the Festival is to create a stimulating and invigorating convocation that links some of the foremost thinkers in the world today with civically-minded leaders in business, the arts, politics, philanthropy, and so forth, who will both share ideas and questions and drive thought to action.
Imagine some of the most inspired and provocative thinkers, writers, artists, business people, teachers, and other leaders drawn from myriad fields and from across the country and around the world – gathered in a single place, ready to teach, speak, lead, question and answer – all interacting with an audience of thoughtful people who have stepped back from their day-to-day routines to delve deeply into a world of ideas, thought, and discussion.
SOURCE The Aspen Institute
Hillis starts by reviewing some of the history of AI from cybernetics, classical AI, neural networks and Big Data. He states that the biggest change over the years is that "we have changed what we think of as thinking."
Another change Hillis mentions is that people used to be very threatened by artificial intelligence. When Gary Kasparov fell to IBMs Deep Blue in chess, for instance people were very upset. Now things are very different. When Watson won on Jeopardy!, the crowd was actually cheering for the computer. Madrigal mentions Brad Templeton's Whistlecars when the conversation turns to self-driving cars. For Hillis, a lot of the explanation of why we are now seeing the emergence of self-driving cars is based on Moore's Law—computers have just gotten faster. "We are now able to implement the ideas that we have had for a long time."
Proteomics is another area that Hillis has done a lot of work in. Using artificial intelligence to monitor the body and your health is really going to become ubiquitous he foresees.
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"One of the interesting things about artificial intelligence, is that you get to see your models reflected back at you. One of the things that usually becomes obvious is that you tell the machine a certain way, then it does, then you realize, oh that wasn't what I meant at all." |
The Aspen Ideas Festival is the nation's premier, public gathering place for leaders from around the globe and across many disciplines to engage in deep and inquisitive discussion of the ideas and issues that both shape our lives and challenge our times. Some 350 presenters, 200 sessions, and 3000 attendees comprise the annual Festival, launched in 2005, on the Aspen Institute's campus in Aspen, Colorado.
The Aspen Institute produces the Aspen Ideas Festival in concert with its partner, The Atlantic. The mission of the Festival is to create a stimulating and invigorating convocation that links some of the foremost thinkers in the world today with civically-minded leaders in business, the arts, politics, philanthropy, and so forth, who will both share ideas and questions and drive thought to action.
Imagine some of the most inspired and provocative thinkers, writers, artists, business people, teachers, and other leaders drawn from myriad fields and from across the country and around the world – gathered in a single place, ready to teach, speak, lead, question and answer – all interacting with an audience of thoughtful people who have stepped back from their day-to-day routines to delve deeply into a world of ideas, thought, and discussion.
SOURCE The Aspen Institute
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