Futurist
Ray Kurzweil has predicted that computers will be as smart as humans
by 2030. By 2045, he claims 'artificial intelligence' systems may be
a billion times more powerful than our unaided 'human intelligence'.
Quantum Computing and Artificial intelligence (AI) will be key components of autonomous,
self-learning robotic systems and ‘smart’ machines of the future.
Are you prepared for what this means?
The
promise of Artificial
Intelligence (AI)
has always been just beyond
the horizon, not quite
realistic yet still capturing
our imagination in
contemporary movies
and literature. At its
inception, AI was initially
deployed for highly
selective defense
or space exploration applications. However,
over time it has steadily advanced and has begun to be utilized in
many other industries, such as transportation,
manufacturing, and
healthcare.
| Health
4.0 Future Scenario: By 2040, a space-based global
artificial intelligence (AI) network of satellites will be in
place that will monitor and help provide healthcare to people on
Earth and in colonies across our solar system on the Moon, Mars,
and other locations. The system will be linked to massive global
health data warehouses storing data from a wide range of health IT
systems, e.g. Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems, Personal
Health Records (PHR), Health Information Exchange (HIE) networks,
wearable fitness trackers, implantable medical devices, clinical
imaging systems, genomic databases and bio-repositories, service
robots, and more. The space-based global AI system will monitor and analyze the health data gathered on all humans in real-time, detecting potential individual and public health issues. The global AI system will detect problems, diagnose them, send alerts to patients and their healthcare providers, diagnose the problems and recommend treatment plans to resolve the healthcare issue. The system will also be interfaced to pharmacies, laboratories, health insurers, public health agencies, and other institutions as needed. The system will also be able to monitor a patient's progress, as well as adherence to recommended treatment plans. It will also seek to anticipate potential healthcare issues, provide preventive health and predictive health information tailored to each human, and even make key healthcare decisions on your behalf. |
RoboEthics
How
people communicate with each other is very different from how people
interact with machines. A
growing trend in computer
systems design and
development now involves
looking more closely
at how
humans
interact, communicate
and make decisions.
The goal is to
teach computers, machines,
robots, and
the Internet of Things (IoT)
to better comprehend,
communicate, and safely
interact with humans.
This
field of study is currently being
referred
to as Robot
Ethics
or
AI
Machine Ethics.
It’s
interesting to note that Robot
Ethics,
also
referred to as RoboEthics,
covers
both
(1)
the
issue
of moral
behavior humans
need
to design
and
build into robots and AI systems interacting
with humans,
in
addition to (2) the moral
obligations of society towards its robots and ‘smart’machines.
These ‘robot rights’ may include the right to life and liberty,
freedom of thought, expression, and equality before the law –
similar to human and animal rights.
| 'Deep learning' is the is one of the current terms used to describe the process of teaching artificial intelligent (AI) systems and self-learning autonomous robots to understand and solve problems by themselves, rather than having engineers having to code each and every decision or solution these non-human systems will make. |
RoboEthics
will be a key issue that needs to be addressed in Health
4.0 Systems.
Recent Articles on Robots, AI and Ethics
The
following are a selection of recent articles on the topic of Robots,
AI and Ethics that you may want to quickly scan as you delve deeper
into the topic at hand:
-
AI Ethics: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robots, and Society - People, governments and companies are already building and programming robots. It should be made clear that whoever owns and operates a robot is responsible for what it does.
-
The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence – This comprehensive report by MIRI, outlines challenges for ensuring that AI systems operates safely when interacting with humans in a variety of settings in the future.
Isaac Asimov’s
“Three
Laws of Robotics”
|
Robotics: Ethics of Artificial Intelligence – Development of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) may be deployed within a few years - and the stakes are high. LAWS will have the ability to select and engage human targets without human intervention. Think about this!
-
Scholars Delve Deeper into the Ethics Of Artificial Intelligence - The U.S. Constitution says that every person should benefit from equal protection under the law. However, our Founding Fathers never contemplated that a ‘person’ would include an artificial intelligent robot.
-
Researchers establish a Standard for Robotic Ethics - As AI continues its rapid advances, it’s become clearer and clearer that we are dealing with some of the most dangerous technology we’ve ever developed.
-
How Tech Giants Are Devising Real Ethics for Artificial Intelligence - Five of the world’s largest tech companies are trying to create a standard of ethics around the creation of artificial intelligence. The importance of the industry effort is underscored in a recent report issued by a Stanford University group.
-
Can Artificial Intelligence Be Ethical? - It is one thing to unleash AI in the context of a game with specific rules and a clear goal; it is something very different to release self-learning AI into the real world, where the unpredictability of the environment may reveal decision-making software errors that have potentially disastrous consequences. Witness the Microsoft chat-bot called ‘Tay’.
-
Will Robots Need Their Own Ethics? - If we view robots as potential agents or persons, with a degree of autonomy that approaches or may even exceed human autonomy, then ‘robot ethics’ depends upon the notion that robots might in some sense be moral agents in their own right.
-
The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: A Future Dilemma with Humanoid Robotics - Inverse Reinforcement Learning (IRL) allows sensor-based AI systems to observe humans, identify behaviors, which can then be converted into a form of operating system software code. This can then be used to develop ‘humanoid’ robotic systems that attempt to act like a human under most conditions. In other words, we’re turning human behavioral patterns into a programmable algorithm - the Algorithm of Life.
BSI's First Robot Code of Ethics Bans AI from Harming Humans - The British Standards Institute (BSI), UK’s leading business standards organization, has published a guide that outlines how robots and robotic systems should take ethics into account.
- Artificial Intelligence Will Radically Redesign Healthcare - AI in healthcare and medicine could organize patient routes or treatment plans better, and also provide physicians with literally all the information they need to make better decisions.
Conclusions
and Recommendations
The
following are a number of preliminary observations, conclusions, and
recommendations for those working on the issue of embedding ethical
rules into tomorrow’s self-learning autonomous robots and
artificial intelligence (AI) systems:
-
‘Open’ Solutions: Because Artificial Intelligence (AI) will have such a profound effect on humanity, it is recommended that AI developers have an ethical obligation to be open and transparent in their efforts. For example, check out the existing OpenCog, Open RoboEthics, and OpenAI initiatives aimed at developing ‘open source’ AI systems for humanity.
-
Software Development – Software development teams attempting to build ‘ethical' AI and robotic systems in healthcare must be composed not only of Subject Matter Experts (SMA), systems analysts and programmers, but should also include Ethicists and Auditors specifically trained to carefully monitor the ongoing, changing behavior of autonomous self-learning robotic systems.
-
Domestic Legal Issues - With the lightening-fast development of robotics engineering and AI systems, the legal world is already way behind the curve. Congress needs to ensure a national oversight group becomes more proactive in developing laws to protect citizens before industry releases potential harmful systems on an unsuspecting public.
-
International Law - Next-generation self-learning robotic weapon systems will have the ability to make their own logical decisions on who to kill. Unfortunately, many governments around the world are already funding Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS) without taking appropriate precautions to protect humans from AI systems that may go ‘rogue’.
What other conclusions and recommendations do you think need to be highlighted?
Selected
References
