Dick Pirozzolo

Harriscom’s Tech PR expert Dick Pirozzolo  recently covered a conference  entitled “AI-Government and AI Arms Races and Norms,” which was organized by his client, the Michael Dukakis Institute (MDI).

In his article, available at http://newcambridgeobserver.com , Dick reports that artificial intelligence (AI) is likely to transform the public sector by automating many government tasks—including  combat decisions. But, he writes,  this “over-the-horizon” technology can only guide and inform government leaders. There will always be a need for human decision making—and for clear ethical standards to prevent harmful intentions.

At the September 20 conference, held at Harvard University,  Professor Marc Rotenberg underscored the growing gap between informed government decision-making and the reality of our technology-driven world.
  “Governments may ultimately lose control of these systems if they don’t take action,” he told some 60 attendees. Rosenberg, who teaches at Georgetown University Law School, is President of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), and a member of the AI World Society Standards and Practice Committee.

Dick’s piece also covers talks by Prof. Matthias Scheutz, Director of the Human-Robot Interaction Laboratory at Tufts University, who cautioned about unconstrained machine learning–stating  that common preventive solutions inside and outside the system are largely insufficient to safeguard AI and robotics technologies. According to Scheutz, “the best way to safeguard AI systems is to build ethical provisions directly into the learning, reasoning, recognition and other algorithms.”

In his presentation, he demonstrated “ethical testing” to catch and handle ethical violations. The talk is available on You-tube at https://youtu.be/66EeYzkTxwA 

Prof. Joseph Nye, emeritus of Harvard University, who created the concept of “Soft Power” diplomacy,   focused on the expansion of Chinese firms in the US market and their ambition to surpass the US in AI. 

The notion of an AI arms race and geopolitical competition in AI can have profound effects on our society, he said. However, he added, predictions that China will overtake the US in AI by 2030 are “uncertain” and “indeterminate” because China’s only advantage is having more data and little concern about privacy. Nye also point out that as people unleash AI, which is leading to warfare and autonomous offensives, we should have treaties in place to control the technology, managed perhaps by international institutions that will monitor AI programs in various countries.

At the symposium, Tuan Nguyen and Michael Dukakis, cofounders of the Michael Dukakis Institute (MDI), announced MDI’s cooperation with AI World–the industry’s largest conference and expo covering the business and technology of enterprise AI, to be held in Boston December 3-5, 2018.

Conference details are published in the current issue of AIWS Weekly.

Dick Pirozzolo is a member of the Harris Communications Group, a Cambridge, Mass.  PR, content  & digital marketing agency with expertise  in healthcare, life sciences, technology and energy, worldwide.