Google is showing off many of its more advanced artificial intelligence capabilities.
Key Details
- Google Research hosted a media event in Manhattan on Wednesday to show how it uses artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the world.
- The company has dozens of projects in development at different stages and all focusing on social improvement and creativity, Axios reports.
- The projects include wildfire tracking, flood forecasting, maternal health, blindness prevention, language processing, autonomous self-coding robots, fiction-crafting tools, and more.
- Several of these programs are already live and operational, and have the potential to save millions of lives.
Why it’s News
AI is one of the most powerful potential tools at the moment, with nearly endless possibilities and applications for improving the lives of humanity. Many of the projects presented though were merely demonstrations of the current start of technology.
“In a demonstration, Google’s Andy Zeng told a robot hovering over three plastic bowls (red, blue, and green) and three pieces of candy (Skittles, M&Ms, and Reese’s) that I liked M&Ms and that my bowl was blue. The robot placed the correct candy in the right bowl, even though it wasn’t directly told to ‘place M&M’s in the blue bowl,’” says Axios.
The Problem
The technology is also potentially dangerous or harmful and has many ethicists and politicians concerned for its potential.
“AI has breathtaking potential to improve and enrich our lives—and comes with hugely worrisome risks of misuse, intrusion, and malfeasance, if not developed and deployed responsibly,” says Axios.
“Fears about AI’s dark side—from privacy violations and the spread of misinformation to losing control of consumer data—recently prompted the White House to issue a preliminary ‘A.I. Bill of Rights,’ encouraging technologists to build safeguards into their products.”
As we previously reported, Google received a lot of criticism for firing a scientist who criticized AI on the grounds that it could perpetuate implicit biases and hired James Manyika as a new ethicist who could better address concerns about its implementation. He ultimately sees A.I. as a tool for hope.
Notable Quote
“Natural disasters are increasing in frequency and intensity due to climate change. As part of our Crisis Response efforts, we’re working to bring trusted information to people in critical moments to keep them safe and informed. To do so, we rely on the research and development of our AI-powered technologies and longstanding partnerships with frontline emergency workers and organizations. Here’s a look at some of our crisis response efforts and new ways we’re expanding these tools,” says Google.
