海角大神

Some of the top minds in tech today have banded together to prevent artificial intelligence (AI) from becoming a scourge for humanity 鈥� and instead optimize its potential for good.

With an initial investment of $1 billion from the leading names in technology, the new nonprofit Open AI launched Saturday with the ambition of ensuring that AI has a positive impact on society.

鈥淥ur goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as whole,鈥� the group wrote in a blog post introducing the new venture. 鈥淏ecause of AI's surprising history, it's hard to predict when human-level AI might come within reach. When it does, it'll be important to have a leading research institution which can prioritize a good outcome for all over its own self-interest.鈥�

Proponents of AI technology, such as the Pentagon, say that robotic weapons with human-level intelligence have the potential to 鈥渋ncrease the precision of drones, keep more troops out of harm鈥檚 way ... and reduce emotional and irrational human decisionmaking on the battlefield,鈥� The Monitor鈥檚 Pete Spotts reported over the summer.

But tech leaders have for some time expressed concern over the dangers of letting loose such technology without oversight.

In an open letter published in July, more than 1,000 AI robotics researchers called for a ban on autonomous offensive weapons in an effort to highlight the dangers of AI in combat and prevent what they said was the inevitably violent arms race that would result:

鈥淲e therefore believe that a military AI arms race would not be beneficial for humanity,鈥� the letter went on.

Open AI intends to combat that dystopian future 鈥� or others like it 鈥� by making new research publicly available and encouraging collaboration across institutions and companies. As a nonprofit, the group hopes to be able to prioritize philanthropy over self-interest.

鈥淓ssentially, OpenAI is a research lab meant to counteract large corporations who may gain too much power by owning super-intelligence systems devoted to profits, as well as governments which may use AI to gain power and even oppress their citizenry,鈥� writes author and longtime tech writer Steven Levy for Medium.

Ilya Sutskever, a former research scientist with the Google Brain team and one of the world鈥檚 top experts on machine learning, is Open AI鈥檚 research director; while Greg Brockman, formerly with the online payment company Stripe, is chief technology officer. Tesla鈥檚 Elon Musk 鈥� a vocal critic of the dangers of AI 鈥� and Y Combinator鈥檚 Sam Altman are the company鈥檚 co-chairs.

鈥淚f you think about how you use, say, applications on the Internet, you鈥檝e got your email and you鈥檝e got the social media and with apps on your phone鈥� 鈥� 鈥妕hey effectively make you superhuman and you don鈥檛 think of them as being other, you think of them as being an extension of yourself. So to the degree that we can guide AI in that direction, we want to do that,鈥� Mr. Musk told Medium.