Beijing is not just trying to master artificial intelligence—it is succeeding. AI will have as transformative an impact on commerce and national security over the next two decades as semiconductors, computers and the web have had over the past quarter century. OVER THE past year, I have been collaborating with a prominent leader in the…
They all do it: corporations, regimes, authorities. They all have the same reasons: efficiency, serviceability, profitability, all under the umbrella term of “security”. Call it surveillance, or call it monitoring the global citizenry; it all comes down to the same thing. You are being watched for your own good, and such instances should be regarded…
Advertised as the latest tool to give shoppers more convenience, facial recognition comes with deep costs to privacy and security. But can anyone remember Silicon Valley asking for permission to use your face? Mankind has long feared that some totalitarian state, as vividly described by visionary writers like George Orwell (1984), Aldous Huxley (Brave New…
The earliest weapons were dual-use technologies: rocks chipped into sharp edges and bound to arrows or spears or clubs that proved as useful for hunting as they did fighting. Modern life is millennia removed from proto-ethical debates over the dangers of collaborating on hunting technology with people who may someday turn it to violence, but…
I have been lonely in my concern with the dire economic implications of robotics, but now Clarity Press has provided me with some company by publishing The Artificial Intelligence Contagion by David Barnhizer and Daniel Barnhizer. It is telling as to the irrelevance of the economics profession that the coauthors are lawyers. The concerns about robots and artificial…
Artificial Intelligence is one thing. Artificial morality is another. It may sound something like this: “First, we believe in the strong defense of the United States and we want the people who defend it to have access to the nation’s best technology, including from Microsoft.” The words are those of Microsoft president Brad Smith, writing…
