Reality check: What is AI, approaching 2021?

Holding lectures on future and digitalisation, and on how to understand the change that is coming over us, I often meet the question about what AI is. Can machines be intelligent? How intelligent is AI? How far can AI reach? Here’s my view, as we are approaching 2021. Let’s first have a look at why...

Here is how we could coexist with a superintelligence

The idea of a superintelligence might be frightening. I have touched the subject before and I also discussed why human values (hopefully) might be important to a superintelligence. But we don't know. Professor Nick Bostrom at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University believes that superintelligence could put all humanity at risk, and he's...

Thinking, fast and slow, pattern recognition and super intelligence

This summer's reading has been Thinking, Fast and Slow by the Israeli-American psychologist and winner of Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Daniel Kahneman. Great reading (although a little heavy to read from start to end in a short time). The book describes the brain's two ways of thinking -- the faster, more intuitive and emotional...

What would it be like to be super intelligent?

Have you ever considered the immediate images appearing in your mind when you hear the word super intelligence? Maybe an alien with a huge cranium staring at you... or a computer controlling every step you take...? Or have you ever tried to imagine what such a super intelligence actually thinks of you? It might turn...

Autonomous cars highlight fundamental questions

I like the recent call from Molly Wood at Cnet News (where I used to work in 2009): “Self-driving cars: Yes, please! Now, please!”. She notes quite obvious advantages with autonomous cars – safety, efficiency and environmental improvements – and observes that the forces working against adoption are fear and love of driving, emotions so...