Forget about the danger of robots creating a sci-fi-style dystopia. The modern corporation is already doing all of that
In the first of his four (stunning) Reith lectures on living with artificial intelligence, Prof Stuart Russell, of the University of California at Berkeley, began with an excerpt from a paper written by Alan Turing in 1950. Its title was Computing Machinery and Intelligence and in it Turing introduced many of the core ideas of what became the academic discipline of artificial intelligence (AI), including the sensation du jour of our own time, so-called machine learning.
From this amazing text, Russell pulled one dramatic quote: “Once the machine thinking method had started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers. At some stage therefore we should have to expect the machines to take control.” This thought was more forcefully articulated by IJ Good, one of Turing’s colleagues at Bletchley Park: “The first ultra-intelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.”
