Google is engaging with governments across the world, even amid tensions around artificial intelligence with Washington. But here is 3 reasons why Google AI clashes with Washington.
Jeff Dean is the Chief of Artificial Intelligence at Google. Google’s leaders iSundar Pichai and Sergey Brin, have long said artificial intelligence is the future of the company and really- the future of our world.
Google kicked off its annual developer confab, I/O, on Tuesday, where it announced artificial intelligence integrations for everything.
1. Privacy and fake news
Privacy and fake news has been the biggest concern lately with Washington over tech companies like Facebook.
Tack on AI and the ability for technology to advance even faster than government and policy and Washington has a huge problem.
“It’s important to engage with governments around the world in how they’re thinking about AI — to help inform them,” Jeff Dean, head of Google AI and one of Alphabet’s top computer scientists, told CNBC’s Josh Lipton on Tuesday.
“Obviously tech companies have a lot of expertise in this space. We can offer advice and our views of where the technology is going — what impact that might have in the broader society. And I think you want governments to be thinking carefully about what the implications of these technologies will be five, 10 years down the road. That seems like a helpful dialogue to have.”
Governments need to be on the same page as technology so that our civilization doesn’t advance our leaders.
2. Drone Targeting
Google employees have also reportedly argued over the company’s role in providing the Pentagon with technology to improve drone targeting.
Washington wants to leverage this technology for their own uses. But even worse, the wrong hands completely (terrorist) could get the open source data and use it for destruction.
“It’s important to understand what kinds of uses we want machine learning to be used for,” Dean said. “As a company, we’re debating what kinds of work we want to be doing. I also think we’re releasing open-source tools …. and many of the uses that other people will put that for are going to be great, but some of them may be things we might not be comfortable with. That’s one of the things about technology. The underlying technology itself is sort of neutral. It’s how people use that and make decisions.”
3. Tech Monopoly
Washington worries artificial intelligence has the ability to take workers’ jobs and that companies like Amazon are a monopoly over other businesses.
We are all familiar with Trump’s twitter attacks on Amazon.
But Dean counters that Google AI wants to make humans more productive and improve their experiences with technology, not take away their jobs.
Communication
Donald Trump’s administration is planning a summit on artificial intelligence with representatives from Google, plus Amazon, Facebook, Intel and 34 other major U.S. companies, according to The Washington Post.