Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin Cautions Against Artificial Intelligence Threats

Add Google co-founder Sergey Brin to the list of people who don’t think that there are no concerns related to artificial intelligence that should be addressed in due course. While he’s not in the same league as people who fear that the technology might become self-aware some day and end mankind as we know it, he does caution about the various threats that artificial intelligence presents in the current “technology renaissance,” threats such as job destruction.

Brin writes in the company’s annual Founders’ Letter that the work being done now on AI is the “most significant development in computing in my lifetime,” but adds that “such powerful tools also bring with them new questions and responsibilities.”

Google already uses artificial intelligence in many of its products and services to make them better. It’s the technology that enables its self-driving cars to recognize objects, it’s what powers its language translation engine, filters questionable content from appearing in search results, and more.

“From the fears of sci-fi style sentience to the more near-term questions such as validating the performance of self-driving cars,” Brin writes that the company is seriously thinking about these issues and others such as how the technology will affect jobs, what are the challenges in making unbiased and transparent algorithms. Another concern is to prevent such algorithms from being used to manipulate people.

Just how soon the company will have answers to these questions remains to be seen, though.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: General
Tags: artificial intelligence, Sergey Brin