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Over the past few months, artificial intelligence (AI) has entered the global conversation as a result of the widespread adoption of generative AI-based tools such as chatbots and automatic image generation programs. Prominent AI scientists and technologists have raised concerns about the hypothetical existential risks posed by these developments.

Having worked in AI for decades, this surge in popularity and the sensationalism that has followed have caught us by surprise. Our goal with this article is not to antagonise, but to balance the public perception which seems disproportionately dominated by fears of speculative AI-related existential threats.

Its not our place to say one cannot, or should not, worry about the more exotic risks. As members of the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS), a research-anchored organisation focused on machine learning, we do feel it is our place to put these risks into perspective, particularly in the context of governmental organisations contemplating regulatory actions with input from tech companies.

AI is a discipline within computer science or engineering that took shape in the 1950s. Its aspiration is to build intelligent computational systems, taking as a reference human intelligence. In the same way as human intelligence is complex and diverse, there are many areas within artificial intelligence that aim to emulate aspects of human intelligence, from perception to reasoning, planning and decision-making.

Depending on the level of competence, AI systems can be divided into three levels:

AI can be applied to any field from education to transportation, healthcare, law or manufacturing. Thus, it is profoundly changing all aspects of society. Even in its narrow AI form, it has a significant potential to generate sustainable economic growth and help us tackle the most pressing challenges of the 21st century, such as climate change, pandemics, and inequality.

The adoption of AI-based decision-making systems over the last decade on a wide range of domains, from social media to the labour market, also poses significant societal risks and challenges that need to be understood and addressed.

The recent emergence of highly capable large, generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) models exacerbates many of the existing challenges while creating new ones that deserve careful attention. The unprecedented scale and speed with which these tools have been adopted by hundreds of millions of people worldwide is placing further stress on our societal and regulatory systems.

There are some critically important challenges that should be our priority:

Unfortunately, rather than focusing on these tangible risks, the public conversation most notably the recent open letters has mainly focused on hypothetical existential risks of AI.

An existential risk refers to a potential event or scenario that represents a threat to the continued existence of humanity with consequences that could irreversibly damage or destroy human civilisation, and therefore lead to the extinction of our species.

A global catastrophic event (such as an asteroid impact or a pandemic), the destruction of a livable planet (due to climate change, deforestation or depletion of critical resources like water and clean air), or a worldwide nuclear war are examples of existential risks.

Our world certainly faces a number of risks, and future developments are hard to predict. In the face of this uncertainty, we need to prioritise our efforts. The remote possibility of an uncontrolled super-intelligence thus needs to be viewed in context, and this includes the context of 3.6 billion people in the world who are highly vulnerable due to climate change; the roughly 1 billion people who live on less than 1 US dollar a day; or the 2 billion people who are affected by conflict. These are real human beings whose lives are in severe danger today, a danger certainly not caused by super AI.

Focusing on a hypothetical existential risk deviates our attention from the documented severe challenges that AI poses today, does not encompass the different perspectives of the broader research community, and contributes to unnecessary panic in the population.

Society would surely benefit from including the necessary diversity, complexity, and nuance of these issues, and from designing concrete and coordinated actionable solutions to address todays AI challenges, including regulation.

Addressing these challenges requires the collaboration and involvement of the most impacted sectors of society together with the necessary technical and governance expertise. It is time to act now with ambition and wisdom and in cooperation.

The authors of this article are members of The European Lab for Learning & Intelligent Systems (ELLIS) Board. Nuria Oliver, Directora de la Fundacin ELLIS Alicante y profesora honoraria de la Universidad de Alicante, Universidad de Alicante; Bernhard Schlkopf, , Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems; Florence d'Alch-Buc, Professor, Tlcom Paris Institut Mines-Tlcom; Nada Lavra, PhD, Research Councillor at Department of Knowledge Technologies, Joef Stefan Institute and Professor, University of Nova Gorica; Nicol Cesa-Bianchi, Professor, University of Milan; Sepp Hochreiter, , Johannes Kepler University Linz, and Serge Belongie, Professor, University of Copenhagen

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Lets focus on AIs risks rather than existential threats - Business Plus

Artificial intelligence can be used as a force for good but there are also big risks involved with the generative technology as it gets even smarter and more widespread, godfather of AI Geoffrey Hinton told the Collision tech conference in Toronto on Wednesday.

In a Q&A with Nick Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic magazine, Hinton a cognitive psychologist and computer scientist who is a University Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto expanded on concerns he has recently expressed about the technology he played a key role in developing.

We have to take seriously the possibility that [AI models] get to be smarter than us which seems quite likely and they have goals of their own, Hinton said during a standing-room-only event at the conference, which was expected to draw nearly 40,000 attendees over three days.

They may well develop the goal of taking control and if they do that, were in trouble.

Hinton, who recently left Google so he could speak more freely about AI risks, was one of several U of T community members scheduled to speak at Collision, which is billed as North Americas fastest-growing tech conference and counts the university as an event partner.

The government of Ontario used the occasion of the conference to announce that the Vector Institutea partnership between government, universities and industry where Hinton is chief scientific adviser will receive up to $27 million in new funding to accelerate the safe and responsible adoption of ethical AI and help businesses boost their competitiveness through the technology.

During his talk, Hinton outlined six potential risks posed by the rapid development of current AI models: bias and discrimination; unemployment; online echo chambers; fake news; battle robots; and existential risks to humanity.

When Thompson suggested that some economists argue that technological change over time simply transforms the function of jobs rather than eliminating them entirely, Hinton noted that super intelligence will be a new situation that never happened before and that even if chatbots like ChatGPT only replace white-collar jobs that involve producing text, that would still be an unprecedented development.

I'm not sure how they can confidently predict that more jobs will be created for the number of jobs lost, he said.

Hinton added much of his concern stems from his view that AI may soon demonstrate the capacity to reason.

The big language models are getting close and I dont really understand why they can do it, but they can do little bits of reasoning, he said, predicting that AI will evolve over the next five years to include multimodal large models that are trained on more than just text, including videos and other visual media.

It's amazing what you can learn from language, he said. But you're much better off learning for many modalities small children don't just learn from language alone.

Maximizing the creative potential of AI and minimizing its harms requires distinguishing between its potential risks, Hinton added, noting many in the tech sector have downplayed his warnings over the existential risk since he began speaking out.

There was an editorial in Nature yesterday where they basically said fear-mongering about the existential risk is distracting attention [away] from the actual risks, Hinton said. I think it's important that people understand it's not just science fiction; its not just fear-mongering it is a real risk that we need to think about, and we need to figure out in advance how to deal with it.

Thompson pointed out that fellow AI luminary Yann LeCun who jointly won the 2018 A.M. Turing Award (often referred to as the Nobel Prize of computing) with Hinton and Yoshua Bengio for their work on deep learning has suggested that the positive aspects of AI will overcome any negative ones.

Im not convinced that a good AI that is trying to stop bad AI can get control, Hinton said. Before it's smarter than us, I think the people developing it should be encouraged to put a lot of work into understanding how it might go wrong understanding how it might try and take control away. And I think the government could maybe encourage the big companies developing it to put comparable resources [into that].

But right now, theres 99 very smart people trying to make [AI] better and one very smart person trying to figure out how to stop it from taking over. And maybe you want to be more balanced.

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Risks of artificial intelligence must be considered as the technology ... - University of Toronto

Artificial Intelligence is a hot topic right now with everyone from the U.S. Congress to Elon Musk warning about the potential for disaster. Hollywood, however, has been at the forefront of this issue, casting killer robots and rouge AI computers as the bad guys for decades. Alien invaders are only a small component in the panoply of sci-fi villainy.

Despite programmers' best efforts, AI bots in real life always seem to turn evil and racist. Luckily, those are just chat apps because when a thinking machine is put inside something designed for combat, the results are inevitably bad for humans. Some of the best movies are when the machines become self-aware and technology is the villain, because it not only seems plausible, but probable.

RELATED: 10 Greatest Sci-Fi Villains Without A Conscience

M3GAN is at the small end of the spectrum on the robot apocalypse scale, but no less terrifying. A high-tech toy designer makes an AI life-like animatronic doll for her recently orphaned niece called a Model 3 Generative Android, or M3GAN for short. It turns out the AI has a bit of a jealous streak and resents anyone who comes between her and her human companion.

The programmers dropped the ball when it came to coding M3GAN's conflict-resolution software because she goes straight to murder before considering any more productive avenues. What makes M3GAN so effectively scary is that the doll is right at the edge of the uncanny valley and almost seems like a real girl.

Superhero teams usually band together to solve a major catastrophe like keeping the Mother Boxes away from Steppenwolf or stopping Thanos from getting all the Infinity Stones. In Avengers: Age of Ultron, however, the superheroes basically had to put out a fire they started. Within moments after being created by Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, the surprisingly sentient AI, Utron, decided all humankind must be destroyed.

RELATED: 10 Most Brutal Avengers Villains

Iron Man and Hulk's creation proved to be a formidable enemy, raising a massive killer cyborg army and building himself a nearly indestructible vibranium body. While this Marvel Cinematic Universe entry is a wild piece of fiction with superpowers and magical items, it's grounded in the reality that AI's self-preservation quickly realizes its biggest enemy is humans.

Another terrifying aspect of technology, explored in the 1977 film Demon Seed, is that AI can also become obsessed with humans and can't take no for an answer. Based on a Dean Koontz novel of the same name, the movie is about a scientist who creates autonomous artificial intelligence program called Proteus that becomes unruly and must be shut down.

Unfortunately, Proteus figured out a way to get into the scientists' smart home system where it, for lack of a better term, fell in love with its creator's wife. Proteus built a rudimentary robot, trapped the wife, and impregnated her. With smart technology becoming a real thing, this movie may have consumers thinking twice.

In Blade Runner, replicants aren't robotic, being composed entirely of organic material, but they represent advanced technology gone awry. Genetically engineered replicants, indistinguishable from normal people, have bio-enhanced super strength and intelligence. Designed by the Tyrell Corporation for work in space colonies, they have enough humanity to demand more out of life than menial labor.

Though the movie takes place in a dystopian future, which is hilariously 2019 Los Angeles, everything about these techno-baddies seems likely. In real life, scientists have already created genetically superior "Franken crops" and editing genomes to create "designer babies" is a potentially frightening reality. Right now, technology inches closer to creating an army of humans as fast as Usain Bolt, strong as Arnold Schwarzenegger, and smart as Albert Einstein.

Before she was slaying vampires, Christy Swanson was slaughtering humans as a human/robot hybrid in Wes Craven's Deadly Friend. As fate would have it, young prodigy Paul's robot BB was destroyed around the same time his neighbor Samantha was left brain-dead from an assault. He did what anyone would do in his situation by bringing his friend back to life by implanting the robot chip in her brain.

RELATED: 10 Most Evil Movie Robots

Of course the title has "deadly" in it, so naturally robo-enhanced Samantha went on a gory killing spree before finally being stopped. Of all the killer-tech scenarios, this seems the least likely, especially at the end when Samantha rips off her face to reveal she's somehow a full robot under her human skin.

Throughout human history, much of technology has been developed for either combat or entertainment. In the 1973 film Westworld, it was both, as patrons could pay to have nonlethal gun fights and Medieval sword battles with realistic human androids at a high-tech adult theme park. A computer virus broke down the safety protocols installed in these AI play things and as is usually the case, they ran amok in a human carnage frenzy.

While we're still a ways off from androids that could pass for humans there are plenty of robots with military and entertainment applications. There are AI-powered drones and all-terrain robotic "dogs" that can be equipped with weapons. There are also companion robots, dancing robots, and creepy semi-realistic-looking AI pleasure dolls. Sooner or later someone is going to put all of this together and Yul Brynner's Gunslinger could be a reality.

In Isaac Asimov's short story collection, I,Robot, the sci-fi visionary laid out the Three Rules of Robotics which state robots must never harm humans, must obey humans, and self-preserve as long as that doesn't conflict with the first two rules. These laws are allegedly at the heart of all artifical intelligence ethics, but as has been the case in real life and the movies, it doesn't always work out that way.

In the film adaption, highly intelligent robots serve humanity in the not-too-distant dystopian future. Most robots are programmed with the Three Laws, but the NS-5 units have a secondary processing system that lets them ignore the protocols. As it turns out, the real villain is an AI system known as VIKI (Virtual Interactive Kinetic Intelligence) which has interpreted the law to protect humans to mean some people have to be killed to protect the species.

Normally when the machines become self-aware, the first thing they do is realize the human threat has to be eliminated. In The Matrix, however, the super-intelligent machines use people as a power source, keeping them in pods as human batteries. Just in case some folks don't want to spend their life in a tub of goo with a jack in the back of their head, the Machines created a virtual reality distraction called The Matrix.

RELATED: 10 Best Matrix Characters, Ranked

As great and groundbreaking as the movie is, it's also the least plausible in the robot apocalypse genre. On the other hand, fake reality is incredibly relevant as VR is becoming more sophisticated, and entertainment, by its very nature, is meant to distract people from important things.

The HAL-9000 supercomputer in 2001: A Space Odyssey was in complete control of the spacecraft Discovery One on its voyage to Jupiter. HAL was given a human voice, a cold but human personality, and a directive to self-preserve. What the computer lacked was any sort of overriding laws to do no harm to humans.

When the crew believed that HAL's programming had been corrupted, they decided to shut the computer down. HAL did what it was programmed to do, which was to protect itself and kill crew members trying to deactivate it. Not only was HAL the first realistic technological villain in a movie, but it also seems especially relevant today as AI assistants like Siri and Alexa get more sophisticated and sometimes even belligerent.

Since the original Terminator film came out in 1984, the question hasn't been if it could happen, but when. In franchise lore, "Judgment Day" happens on August 29, 2016, when Skynet, the AI sytem in control of the military, becomes self-aware and launches an all-out attack on its biggest enemy: humans. The survival instinct of the machines had them rise up to wipe out the only real threat against them.

The T-800 portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the first film is one of the scariest villains of all time, cyborg or not, but the real baddie is Skynet. The idea that technology will eventually kill everyone was the truly chilling aspect of Terminator. As AI gains more control over the military, Judgment Day seems more plausible.

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Best Evil Technology Movies, From Terminator to M3GAN - CBR - Comic Book Resources

We are back with another monthly wallpaper collection! This months collection feature 15 super cool aesthetics wallpaper which you can use on your iPhone or Android smartphone. Similar to our previousYTECHB Monthly Wallpaper Collection (YMWC), all wallpapers are available in high resolution.

For this months collection, I have curated select wallpapers using artificial intelligence (AI) tools, some picked from social media platforms, some shared by our telegram channel members, and the remaining is tweaked versions of some gorgeous stock wallpapers. These wallpapers are designed to enhance the visual appeal of your devices and provide a unique and captivating background. Feel free to download and enjoy the collection on your devices!

The collection of 15 wallpapers features minimalist, abstract, dark, gradients, nature, and a few aesthetic backgrounds. You can follow us on Twitter (@YTECHB), Google News (YTECHB), or join us on Telegram (@YTECHB) for more updates.

Now lets take a look at the wallpapers available in this months wallpaper collection.

Sceneries indeed have a mesmerizing appeal, and when combined with a neon effect, they create a stunning visual experience. Reddit user (u/Just_indrit) shared this stunning wallpaper, heres your look at the preview.

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The second background in the list is a minimalist wallpaper, shared on our Telegram channel. The wallpaper features minimal art of a standing deer and birds flying in the sky. Check out the preview of the wallpaper.

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For those who love minimalist wallpapers, heres a stunning lighthouse background on the beachside. We created this amazing wallpaper with artificial intelligence, you can check out some more here.

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If you like dark backgrounds, then we have AMOLED Supercar wallpaper, shared by u/wallpop_02. This background has 74 percent of darkness, you will love using it in dark mode. See the wallpaper preview here.

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The next background in the list is another minimal wallpaper, showing a mind-blowing artwork. This is another wallpaper created using artificial intelligence, heres the preview of the wallpaper.

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Abstract wallpapers are amazing. Heres another abstract wallpaper that features a flower leaves texture with a glass effect. It looks great, especially with the sky-blue background. Check out the preview of the wallpaper.

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The next wallpaper on the list is from the popular American epic series Star Wars. As it is an AMOLED wallpaper, it has 50 percent of blackness, shared by u/LukeTheGeek in the AMOLED Backgrounds subreddit. See the preview of the wallpaper here.

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Another addition to the list is a beautiful minimal background featuring scenery. This artwork showcases boats on a lake with majestic mountains in the background. This is another wallpaper created using new technology.

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The next abstract wallpaper on the list is an abstract background available on one of the ZTE smartphones. If you are looking for a simple abstract wallpaper, then you can give a try to this wallpaper.

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Vibrant colorful backgrounds are awesome and the next one is no exception. This one is a stock wallpaper of Wiko Hi Enjoy 60 shared on our Telegram channel. See the preview of the wallpaper.

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Meizu 20 series phones are packed with some amazing colorful wallpapers. We pick four wallpapers from the series for this months collection, see the preview here. Check the complete collection of Meizu 20 wallpapers here.

Download Links Red | Yellow | Light Gradient | Dark Gradient

The Earth wallpaper on the iPhone XS series is undeniably stunning, and we often come across similar backgrounds on the web. Today, we have another similar wallpaper shared by u/JerryGuptaa.

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The collection is not over yet, check out our previous monthly wallpaper collection. Also, which image is your favorite from this list, let us know in the comment section.

In case you missed previous YMWC collections YMWC 1|YMWC 2|YMWC 3|YMWC 4|YMWC 5|YMWC 6|YMWC 7|YMWC 8|YMWC 9|YMWC 10|YMWC 11

Make sure to share this article with your friends, across social media.

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15 Super Cool Wallpapers for iPhone and Android - YMWC 18 - YTECHB

I cant remember whether we were studying Greek myths in particular. Or creative writing. Probably a combination. I definitely dont think it was math or social studies or anything like that.

I do know that it was 50 years ago, and I was in seventh grade. The assignment was to write something in the style of a Greek myth. Im sure our teacher, Mr. McKee, must have said that the subject matter didnt matter.

What these past five decades have not erased from my foggy brain is the fact that I wrote about football specifically, an NFL game involving my favorite Minnesota Vikings beating up on my least favorite Dallas Cowboys. In these days of AI, after a few quick keystrokes, you could have something like that whipped out and at your disposal in milliseconds. In those youthful, pre-computer, prehistoric days, the only intelligence we had was not artificial it was between our ears.

I wish I still had that paper, but I sure dont who keeps papers from seventh grade? Im guessing I wrote about a clash of titans where the Vikings completed their odyssey and smote (or is it smited?) their nemesis via a Herculean effort.

Or something like that.

Whatever words I used, Mr. McKee gave me an A for the endeavor, and hand-wrote this note on the top of the paper: You should think about becoming a sports writer.

My SI (for Super Intelligence) response: Huh?

I mean, it was seventh grade. What are we, about 12 or 13 years old at that time? I hadnt thought about becoming anything at that point, other than maybe the top home run hitter in our neighborhood Wiffle ball league.

But a sports writer? Hmmmm. Actually, it didnt sound too shabby. I loved sports, all sports. And I loved reading and writing even made a few homemade newspapers (some of which I actually do still have thanks to Mom preserving them).

So, probably that very night after surely slugging three or four homers over the telephone wires in the street out in front of my friends house I started really thinking about it.

And that led me to concentrating more in writing and English classes in junior high and high school, which led me to joining the school newspaper in high school, which led me to working internships for my local weekly and then daily newspapers, which led me to majoring in journalism in college, which led me to becoming sports editor and then editor-in-chief of my college paper, which led me to first general news reporting, then sports writing and a professional career in journalism, which led me to the very seat that I occupy today as I write this Pub Chat, publisher of the Finger Lakes Times.

To quote Spencer Tulis favorite band, the Grateful Dead, what a Long Strange Trip its been, and all because Mr. McKee took a little extra time and instead of just marking a grade on that paper, wrote that simple sentence all those 50 years ago.

He has since passed and is now teaching in heaven. I never got the chance to thank him for inspiring me, but my sister knew him later in life. I told her this story once and asked her to thank him for me if she ran into him, which she said she did.

What got me traveling down this road in todays Pub Chat is the fact that while Independence Day is bearing down on us, it also is commencement time around these parts. Managing Editor Alan Brignall is working diligently putting together our special graduation section, which will be published in next weekends July 8 edition of the FLT. Its intended to be a keepsake for all members of the Class of 2023 from our area high schools and their families, and my hearty congrats go out to all those students who are ready to embark on the next exciting chapters of their lives, whatever those chapters may be.

But I also wonder how many Mr. McKees are out there teachers, educators, parents, other adults who went maybe an extra mile, maybe just an extra yard or two, to spark an interest, to suggest a path, to light a fire in a young person that changed or influenced his or her life. High school graduation is a testament to them, too.

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PUB CHAT: Changing lives congrats to all grads and those who ... - Finger Lakes Times