An Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and Ethics

Background of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a hot topic in the twenty-first century. It’s become so prevalent that there’s a need for over a million AI engineers worldwide,YouTube created a nine-video series on AI, andElon Musk started a company called Neuralink in response to his concerns around AI. AI has almost doubled in interest over the past five years according to Google Trends, but has been around since the 1950’s — Norbert Wiener theorized that all intelligent behavior was the result of feedback mechanisms and this very idea influenced much of the early development of AI. However, for reasons which I’ll explain below, the emergence of AI and its potential is relatively new.

The truth is that artificial intelligence and the ideas that surround it are fairly misunderstood, and I believe that the lack of understanding around AI is a factor in why it’s such a controversial topic. In fact, controversies are thought to be a result of a lack of confidence on the part of the disputants. For example, in regard to controversies over climate change, it’s been proposed that some people are opposed to the scientific consensus because they don’t have enough information about the topic.