Technology has made our lives easier, but will the rush to develop artificial intelligence come back to bite us?
Imagine a world where computers are smart enough to write their own programs, and take charge not only of their own future but of ours as well.It may sound like the stuff of science fiction but for Australian philosopher Hew Price the possibility is visibly on the horizon-and it's something we should all confront.Price found himself forced to contemplate the dangers posed by artificial intelligence(AI)when he took a ride in a Copenhagen cab in 2011.
Price, who was about to begin his new job as the University of Cambridge’s Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy, took Tallinn seriously. So seriously that last November, the pair – along with Britain’s Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees, a Cambridge professor of cosmology and astrophysics – proposed a landmark venture: the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER).