Social implications of intelligent machines

ABSTRACT

The much-discussed issues of privacy, unemployment, leisure, centralization of political power, and military misuse of technology are raised by work in artificial intelligence no less than by applications exploiting the “brute force” of computers. But this paper focuses specifically on matters associated with the social use of intelligent machines in particular. Some current and predicted developments in machine intelligence are described and possible ill and good effects these may have on society outlined. Precautionary measures that might be taken in the writing and presentation of programs to forestall the social dangers implicit in this area of research are examined.

REFERENCES

• 1: The 'chess champion' forecast was made and withdrawn by H.A. Simon, one of the programmers of the General Problem Solver (GPS). For a discussion of the organization of large amounts of knowledge, see, e.g., Minsky, M.L., 'A framework for representing knowledge', in 'The Psychology of Computer Vision', ed. Winston, P.H., pp. 221-77 (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1975).
• 2: Firschein, O., Fischler, M.A., Coles, L.S. and Tenenbaum, J.M., 'Forecasting and assessing the impact of artificial intelligence on society', Third Int. Joint Conf. on Artificial Intelligence, pp. 105-20, 1973.
• 3: Shortliffe, E.H., Axline, S.G., Buchanan, B.G., Merigan, T.C. and Cohen, N.S., 'An artificial intelligence program to advise physicians regarding anti-microbial therapy', Computers and Biomedical Research, 6, pp. 544-60, 1973; Shortliffe, E.H., Davis, R., Axline, S.G., Buchanan, B.G., Green, C.C. and Cohen, N.S., 'Computer-based consultations in clinical therapeutics: explanation and rule acquisition capabilities of the MYCIN System', Computers and Biomedical Research, 8, pp. 303-20, 1975.
• 4: Shortliffe, E.H. and Buchanan, B.G., 'A model of inexact reasoning in medicine', Mathematical Biosciences, 23, pp. 351-79, 1975.
• 5: Hart, P.E., 'Progress on a computer based consultant', Fourth Int. Joint Conf. on Artificial Intelligence, pp. 831-41, 1975.
• 6: For current attempts to base CAI on the flexible representation of knowledge, see: Collins, A. 'Process in acquiring knowledge', in Anderson, R.C., Spiro, R.J., and Montague, W.E., eds., 'Schooling and the Acquisition of Knowledge' (Erlbaum, Hillsdale, N.J., in press); Seely-Brown, J. and Burton, R.R., 'Multiple representations of knowledge for tutorial reasoning', in Bobrow, D.G. and Collins, A., eds., 'Representation and Understanding: Studies in Cognitive Science', pp. 311-50 (Academic Press, New York, 1975).
• 7: McCarthy, J., 'The home information terminal', 'Man and Computer', Proc. Int. Conf., Bordeaux 1970, pp. 48-57 (Karger, Basel, 1972).
• 8: Underwood, M.J., "Machines that understand speech," The Radio and Electronic Engineer, 47, No. 8/9, pp. 368-376, August/September 1977.
• 9: Reddy, D.R., Erman, L.D., Fennell, R.D. and Neely, R.B., "The HEARSAY speech understanding system," Proc. Third Int. Joint Conf. on Artificial Intelligence, pp. 185-93, 1973; Reddy, D.R. and Newell, A., "Knowledge and its representation in a speech understanding system," in "Knowledge and Cognition" ed. Gregg, L.W., pp. 253-286 (Erlbaum, Baltimore, 1974).
• 10: Tenenbaum, J.M. and Weyl, S., "A region-analysis subsystem for interactive scene analysis," Fourth Int. Joint Conf. on Artificial Intelligence, pp. 682-7, 1975.
• 11: Fahlman, S.E., "A planning system for robot construction tasks," Artificial Intelligence, 5, pp. 1-50, 1974.
• 12: Winston, P.H., "The MIT robot," in "Machine Intelligence 7," eds. Meltzer, B. and Michie, D., pp. 465-80 (Edinburgh University Press, 1972).
• 13: Roszak, T., "Where the Wasteland Ends: Politics and Transcendence in Post Industrial Society" (Doubleday, New York, 1972); Marcuse, H., "One Dimensional Man: The Ideology of Industrial Society" (Routledge, Kegan Paul, London, 1964).
• 14: May, R., ed., "Existential Psychology," p. 20 (Random House, New York, 1961).
• 15: The technical aspects of "tele-voting" were discussed in 1959 by Dr. Vladimir K. Zworykin in the Institution's 4th Clerk Maxwell Memorial Lecture: "The Human Aspect of Engineering Progress," J. Brit. Instn. Radio Engrs,| 19, No. 9, pp. 529-44 (see pp. 541-4) September 1959.
• 16: Joseph Weizenbaum, Contextual understanding by computers, Communications of the ACM, v.10 n.8, p.474-480, Aug. 1967 [doi>10.1145/363534.363545]
• 17: Joseph Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation, W. H. Freeman & Co., New York, NY, 1976
• 18: Card, W.I., Nicholson, M., Crean, G.P., Watkinson, G., Evans, C.R., Wilson, J. and Russell, D., "A comparison of doctor and computer interrogation of patients," Int. J. Biomedical Computing, 5, pp. 175-87, 1974.
• 19: Papert, S., "Teaching children to be mathematicians versus teaching about mathematics," Int. J. Educ. Sci. Technol., 3, pp. 249-62, 1972.
• 20: Gerald Jay Sussman, A Computer Model of Skill Acquisition, Elsevier Science Inc., New York, NY, 1975
• 21: Hewitt, C., "PLANNER: a language for proving theorems in robots," First Int. Joint Conf. on Artificial Intelligence, pp. 295-301, 1969; Hewitt, C., "Procedural embedding of knowledge in PLANNER," Second Int. Joint Conf. on Artificial Intelligence, pp. 167-84, 1971.
• 22: Sussman, G.J. and McDermott, D.V., "Why Conniving is Better than Planning," AI Memo 255a, MIT AI Lab., 1972.
• 23: Toffler, A., "Future Shock" (Random House, New York, 1970).
• 24: Roszak, T., loc. cit., p. 69.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
      I.2.1 Applications and Expert Systems

General Terms:
Theory

Keywords:
Artificial intelligence, Social implications of computers