Eric Schmidt Calls for AI Research to be Done in the Open

While many approach Artificial Intelligence with caution and even many more with fear, Alphabet Inc. Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt always had a different viewpoint than the rest, stating that fears of AI uprising is just mostly science fiction.

Speaking at the RSA Conference 2017 in San Francisco, Schmidt calls for AI research to be done in the open and away from Military research labs. It is not AI that worries Schmidt more but it is humans that he fears. “There’s so much else going on that we should worry about ourselves. My personal view.” said Schmidt.

Schmidt believes that developing AI machine learning out in the open and in public ensures the preservation of its interconnectedness and away from militarization. An open approach also demystifies artificial intelligence to the public and allows people to see that Artificial Intelligence development is not something to fear or made strictly for military use.

As it stands, public awareness of AI is based largely on apocalyptic science-ficton movies and not based on any quantifiable pretext. “That, by the way, is a movie, OK? That’s a movie, it’s not true. Can we start over? It’s a movie. It has not occurred yet, we’re still here,” Schmidt adds “And, more importantly, the scenario has an enormous number of assumptions.”

He accepts that the fear of AI uprising is a reasonable intellectual topic worthy of discussion but asserts that we are still “in the baby stages of doing conceptual learning and deconstructing concepts” to be worried about it. The integrity of the data used for training AI systems instead should be the topic at the forefront.

“These systems depend on data and they are trained against that data, but, assuming a perfect algorithm, if the data has been manipulated in some way, you will not get the outcome you expect. So it is very important for these systems to understand that they are advisory – they help you to understand something, but ultimately you want humans to be in charge of these things.”