Artificial intelligence is making rapid progress and has the potential to bring huge benefits to many aspects of our lives, including improved services for sick, elderly or disabled people, disease diagnosis, development of new medicines, perfecting driverless vehicles and resolving problems related to climate change.
While AI is expected to contribute to enhancing people's well-being and happiness, it has the potential of doing harm or being used for unethical purposes. The government, scientists, engineers and businesspeople involved in applying AI should push discussions on such questions as the relationship between AI and people and society, and ethical issues involved in the use of AI. Particularly important will be to deepen discussions on how to prevent harm caused by the wrongful use of AI. Such discussions will be indispensable to building public trust in AI and robots.
Google's artificial intelligence program AlphaGo made headlines in March when it achieved a 4-1 win over South Korean go grandmaster Lee Sedol in a five-game tournament. AlphaGo's overwhelming victory pointed to the possibility that rapidly evolving AI will catch up with and eventually surpass human intelligence. But another incident the same month underlined the fact that while AI may bring benefits to our lives, it also carries dangers. Microsoft's AI chatbot was tricked by online people into making racist and hateful remarks — such as "Hitler was right, I hate the Jews" and "I f—-king hate feminists they should all die and burn in hell." Microsoft had to issue an official apology.