Homepage / Technology / IBM is telling Congress not to fear the rise of an AI ‘overlord’
Amazon says this Prime Day was its biggest shopping event ever Kudlow says President Trump is 'so dissatisfied' with China trade talks that he is keeping the pressure on As stocks regain their footing, an ominous warning looms Goldman Sachs downgrades Clorox to sell, says valuation is 'unsustainably high' How Satya Nadella has spurred a tripling of Microsoft's stock price in just over four years Kudlow says economic growth could top 4% for 'a quarter or two,' more tax cuts could be coming The one chart that explains Netflix’s stunning comeback US housing starts plunge 12% in June to a nine-month low Aerospace titans Boeing and Airbus top $110 billion in orders at Farnborough Target uses Prime Day to its advantage, logging its 'biggest online shopping day' so far this year Billionaire Marc Lasry sees bitcoin reaching up to $40,000 as it becomes more mainstream and easier to trade These are the 10 US airports where you're most likely to be hacked Amazon shares slightly higher as investors await Prime Day results Wreck of Russian warship found, believed to hold gold worth $130 billion A bullish ‘phenomenon’ in bond market is weeks away from fading, top credit strategist says Stocks making the biggest moves premarket: MS, GOOGL, TXN, UAL, NFLX & more Twitter shares up 50% since late April means most upside priced in, analyst says in downgrade EU fines Google $5 billion over Android antitrust abuse Mortgage applications fall 2.5% as buyers struggle to find affordable homes America may not have the tools to counter the next financial crisis, warn Bernanke, Geithner and Paulson Investors are getting spooked as the risk of a no-deal Brexit rises EU expected to fine Google $5 billion over Android antitrust abuse Ex-FBI chief James Comey urges Americans to vote for Democrats in midterm elections Elon Musk apologizes to British cave diver following baseless 'pedo guy' claim Disney, Comcast and Fox: All you need to know about one of the biggest media battles ever Xiaomi shares notch new high after Hong Kong, mainland China stock exchanges reach agreement The trade war is complicating China's efforts to fix its economy European markets set for a strong open amid earnings; Google in focus Hedge fund billionaire Einhorn places sixth in major poker tournament The biggest spender of political ads on Facebook? President Trump Asian stocks poised to gain after Fed's Powell gives upbeat comments; dollar firmer Stocks are setting up to break to new highs Not all FAANG stocks are created equal EU ruling may be too little, too late to stop Google's mobile dominance Cramer explains how Netflix's stock managed to taper its drop after disappointing on earnings Airbnb condemns New York City's 'bellhop politics,' threatens legal retaliation Amazon sellers say they were unfairly suspended right before Prime Day, and now have two bad choices Investor explains why 'duller' tech stocks can have better returns than 'high-flying' tech names Elon Musk is 'thin-skinned and short-tempered,' says tech VC Texas Instruments CEO Brian Crutcher resigns for violating code of conduct Google Cloud Platform fixes issues that took down Spotify, Snapchat and other popular sites Uber exec: We want to become the 'one stop' transportation app 'What a dumb hearing,' says Democrat as Congress grills tech companies on conservative bias Amazon shares rebound, report says Prime Day sales jumped 89 percent in first 12 hours of the event How to put your medical history on your iPhone in less than 5 minutes Investment chief: Watch these two big events in 2018 Even with Netflix slowing, the market rally is likely not over Cramer: Netflix subscriber weakness debunks the 'sky's the limit' theory on the stock Netflix is looking at watch time as a new area of growth, but the competition is stiff Why Nobel laureate Richard Thaler follows Warren Buffett's advice to avoid bitcoin Rolls-Royce is developing tiny 'cockroach' robots to crawl in and fix airplane engines After Netflix plunge, Wall Street analysts forecast just tame returns ahead for the once high-flying FANG group Roku shares rise after analyst raises streaming video company's price target due to customer growth China is investing 9 times more into Europe than into North America, report reveals Amazon says US Prime Day sales 'so far bigger than ever' as glitch is resolved Netflix is on pace for its worst day in two years US lumber producers see huge opportunity, rush to expand San Francisco to consider tax on companies to help homeless Homebuilder sentiment, still high, stalls as tariffs, labor and land drive up costs Powell backs more rate hikes as economy growing 'considerably stronger' Netflix history is filled with big stock declines – like today – followed by bigger rebounds Intel shares get downgraded by Evercore ISI due to rising competition from Nvidia, AMD Petco aims to reinvent the pet store with something you can't buy online Genetic testing is coming of age, but for consumers it's buyer beware Tech 'FAANG' was the most-crowded trade in the world heading into the Netflix implosion, survey shows Netflix weak subscriber growth may indicate a 'maturity wall' that could whack the stock even more: Analyst This chart may be predicting the bull market's demise Wall Street says Netflix's stock plunge is a ‘compelling’ buying opportunity because the streaming giant ‘never misses twice’ Tesla sinks after Musk tweets, again Boeing announces new division devoted to flying taxis Stocks making the biggest move premarket: NFLX, UNH, GS, AMZN, WMT & more Deutsche Bank downgrades Netflix, but says big subscriber miss is not 'thesis changing' IBM is experimenting with a cryptocurrency that’s pegged to the US dollar North Korea and Zimbabwe: A friendship explained Virgin Galactic spinoff Orbit to launch rockets from the UK with space deal Artificial intelligence will create more jobs than it destroys? That’s what PwC says ‘Treasonous’ Trump and ‘Putin’s poodle:' Scathing headlines follow the Trump-Putin summit China’s fintech companies offer ‘enormous’ opportunity, investment manager says Trump's performance at summit with Putin was 'unprecedented,' experts say Walmart and Microsoft link up on cloud technology as they both battle Amazon European stocks seen mixed amid earnings; Fed’s Powell to address Congress How I knew I should quit my day job and run my start-up full-time: Viral website founder China's stocks have been trounced, but the trade war may ultimately be good news for those shares Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel bets on crypto start-up Block.one Asian shares subdued open after mixed close on Wall Street; energy stocks under pressure Amazon cloud hits snags after Amazon Prime Day downtime Netflix isn't doomed by one quarter unless people start questioning the long-term investor thesis Tech stocks set to sink on Tuesday after rough evening for ‘FANG’ Netflix plummets after missing big on subscriber growth This wristband lets humans control machines with their minds The U.S. has a rocky history convincing Russia to extradite computer criminals Amazon suffers glitches at the start of Prime Day Jeff Bezos is now the richest man in modern history 'The United States has been foolish': Read Trump and Putin's full exchange Goldman Sachs recommends these 5 highly profitable companies — including Nvidia — to combat rising inflation Goldman Sachs releases 'tactical' stock picks for this earnings season Three red flags for Netflix ahead of its earnings report The bond market may be raising recession fears, but don't expect one anytime soon Cramer: Banks are 'making fortunes' but are still as hated as they were during the financial crisis Putin told Trump at summit: Russia never meddled in US election

Technology

IBM is telling Congress not to fear the rise of an AI ‘overlord’

The brains behind IBM‘s Jeopardy-winning, disease-tracking, weather-mapping Watson supercomputer plan to embark on a lobbying blitz in Washington, D.C., this week, hoping to show federal lawmakers that artificial intelligence isn’t going to kill jobs — or humans.

To hear IBM tell it, much of the recent criticism around machine learning, robotics and other kinds of AI amounts to merely “fear mongering.” The company’s senior vice president for Watson, David Kenny, aims to convey that message to members of Congress beginning with a letter on Tuesday, stressing the “real disaster would be abandoning or inhibiting cognitive technology before its full potential can be realized.”

Labor experts and reams of data released in recent months argue otherwise: They foretell vast economic consequences upon the mass-market arrival of AI, as entire industries are displaced — not just blue-collar jobs like trucking, as self-driving vehicles replace humans at the wheel, but white-collar positions like stock trading too.

Others fear the privacy, security and safety implications as more tasks, from managing the country’s roads to reading patients’ X-ray results, are automated — and the most dire warnings, from the likes of SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk, include the potential arrival of “robots capable of destroying mankind.”

But as IBM seeks to advance and sell its AI-driven services, like Watson, the company plans to tell lawmakers those sort of concerns are “fantasy.” Along with a private meeting with some lawmakers near Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Kenny is urging Congress to avoid reacting out of fear and pursuing some proposals, like an idea from Bill Gates to tax robots, as regulators debate how to handle this fast-growing field.

“The impact of AI is evident in the debate about its societal implications — with some fearful prophets envisioning massive job loss, or even an eventual AI ‘Overlord’ that controls humanity,” Kenny wrote. “I must disagree with these dystopian views.”

For IBM, the stakes are high: Watson and the future of what it calls “cognitive technology” are critical to Big Blue’s business. Beyond Watson’s existing work — from aiding in cancer research to funnier tasks, like writing a cookbook — IBM has sought to bring its famed supercomputer to tackle some of the sprawling, data-heavy tasks of the federal government.

In some ways, though, the most vexing challenges facing AI aren’t technological — they’re political.

More From Recode:
More manufacturing jobs came back to the US than left last year
Read Mark Zuckerberg’s full commencement address at Harvard
Mark Zuckerberg called on Harvard’s graduates to help save the environment and cure all disease

Self-driving cars, trucks and drones, for example, can’t just take to the roads and skies without permission from local and federal regulators, which are only just beginning to loosen restrictions on those industries.

Others fear that automation might lead to discrimination: Under President Barack Obama, the White House spent months warning that highly powerful algorithms could share the biases of their authors, leading to unfair treatment of minorities or other disadvantaged communities in everything from obtaining a credit card to buying a house. That’s why his administration in October explicitly urged Congress to help it hire more AI specialists in key government oversight roles.

And more challenging still are the economic implications of AI. It will be up to federal officials — including President Donald Trump or his successors — to grapple with untold numbers of Americans who might someday find themselves out of a job and in need of training in order to find new careers. (Trump’s own Treasury secretary, however, previously has said AI is more than 50 years away from causing such disruptions.)

Sensing potential political hurdles, companies like Apple, Facebook, Google and IBM chartered a new organization, the Partnership for Artificial Intelligence, last year. In doing so, they hoped to craft ethical standards around the safe and fair operation of machine learning and robotics before government regulators — in the United States or elsewhere — sought to more aggressively target AI with consumer protection regulations. AI now counts among some of those tech companies’ regular lobbying expenses.

And IBM, in particular, has spent years trying to tell a friendlier, less economically catastrophic story about AI in the nation’s capital — a campaign that it will continue this week.

“Technological advancements have always stoked fears and concern over mass job loss,” Kenny wrote in his Tuesday letter to Congress. “But history suggests that AI, similar to past revolutionary technologies, will not replace humans in the workforce.”

In many cases, like cyber security and medicine, Kenny told lawmakers it’s still humans at the end of the day who can “choose the best course of action when an AI system has identified a problem.” He stressed that government should instead focus its attention on fixing a “shortage of workers with the skills needed to work in partnership with AI systems.”

For all the scrutiny facing the industry, however, some in Congress are still getting up to speed. That’s why lawmakers like Rep. John Delaney, D-Md., co-founded the Congressional Artificial Intelligence Caucus, an informal organization of Democrats and Republicans studying the issue. His group is hosting IBM’s Kenny and other tech leaders at a private, off-record event at the Capitol Hill Club on Wednesday.

Delaney told Recode he comes to AI from the perspective that the “sky is not falling” — that even if industries change, old jobs might still be replaced by new ones in emerging fields. With the caucus, he said, the goal is to “make sure Congress is as informed on this issue as possible, so when it inevitably has some sort of knee-jerk reactions” on AI, the final response from Capitol Hill is “more measured” in scope.

Asked if the tech industry similarly appreciates the economic implications of its inventions, the congressman replied: “I think the [tech] industry focuses, as it should, on being at the cutting edge of innovation and creating products and services that enhance productivity and improve peoples’ lives.”

“So when they’re thinking about driverless cars, do they spend more time thinking about how this will enhance productivity, and how it will [protect] safety, than the jobs that will be affected? I think the answer is probably yes, but I don’t think they do it in some of kind of nefarious way,” Delaney said.

By Tony Romm, Recode.net.

CNBC’s parent NBCUniversal is an investor in Recode’s parent Vox, and the companies have a content-sharing arrangement.

Source: Tech CNBC
IBM is telling Congress not to fear the rise of an AI ‘overlord’

Comments are closed.