(Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
A vehicle and person recognition organisation for apply past constabulary enforcement is demonstrated at last twelvemonth's GPU Technology Conference in Washington, D.C., which highlights new uses for artificial intelligence and deep learning. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

Digital life is augmenting man capacities and disrupting eons-old human activities. Code-driven systems have spread to more than than one-half of the world's inhabitants in ambient information and connectivity, offering previously unimagined opportunities and unprecedented threats. Every bit emerging algorithm-driven artificial intelligence (AI) continues to spread, will people be better off than they are today?

Some 979 engineering pioneers, innovators, developers, business and policy leaders, researchers and activists answered this question in a canvassing of experts conducted in the summer of 2018.

The experts predicted networked artificial intelligence will dilate human effectiveness but besides threaten human autonomy, agency and capabilities. They spoke of the wide-ranging possibilities; that computers might match or fifty-fifty exceed human intelligence and capabilities on tasks such as complex decision-making, reasoning and learning, sophisticated analytics and pattern recognition, visual acuity, speech recognition and language translation. They said "smart" systems in communities, in vehicles, in buildings and utilities, on farms and in business processes volition save time, money and lives and offer opportunities for individuals to savour a more-customized time to come.

Many focused their optimistic remarks on health intendance and the many possible applications of AI in diagnosing and treating patients or helping senior citizens live fuller and healthier lives. They were also enthusiastic about AI'southward function in contributing to wide public-wellness programs built around massive amounts of data that may be captured in the coming years almost everything from personal genomes to nutrition. Additionally, a number of these experts predicted that AI would advocate long-anticipated changes in formal and informal educational activity systems.

Yet, most experts, regardless of whether they are optimistic or not, expressed concerns about the long-term bear on of these new tools on the essential elements of being man. All respondents in this non-scientific canvassing were asked to elaborate on why they felt AI would leave people meliorate off or non. Many shared deep worries, and many also suggested pathways toward solutions. The main themes they sounded about threats and remedies are outlined in the accompanying table.

AI and the futurity of humans: Experts express concerns and suggest solutions

CONCERNS Homo agency:
Individuals are  experiencing a loss of command over their lives
Conclusion-making on key aspects of digital life is automatically ceded to lawmaking-driven, "black box" tools. People lack input and do not learn the context almost how the tools work. They sacrifice independence, privacy and power over choice; they have no command over these processes. This issue will deepen every bit automated systems become more than prevalent and complex.
Data abuse:
Data use and surveillance in circuitous systems is designed for profit or for exercising power
Most AI tools are and will be in the hands of companies striving for profits or governments striving for power. Values and ethics are oftentimes not broiled into the digital systems making people's decisions for them. These systems are globally networked and not easy to regulate or rein in.
Job loss:
The AI takeover of jobs will widen economic divides, leading to social upheaval
The efficiencies and other economical advantages of lawmaking-based machine intelligence will continue to disrupt all aspects of human work. While some look new jobs will sally, others worry about massive chore losses, widening economic divides and social upheavals, including populist uprisings.
Dependence lock-in:
Reduction of individuals' cognitive, social and survival skills
Many see AI as augmenting human capacities just some predict the opposite - that people's deepening dependence on automobile-driven networks volition erode their abilities to think for themselves, take action contained of automated systems and interact finer with others.
Mayhem:
Autonomous weapons, cybercrime and weaponized information
Some predict further erosion of traditional sociopolitical structures and the possibility of great loss of lives due to accelerated growth of autonomous military applications and the utilize of weaponized information, lies and propaganda to dangerously destabilize human being groups. Some also fear cybercriminals' achieve into economical systems.
SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS Global proficient is No. 1:
Improve human collaboration across borders and
stakeholder groups
Digital cooperation to serve humanity's all-time interests is the superlative priority. Ways must be plant for people effectually the globe to come up to common understandings and agreements - to join forces to facilitate the innovation of widely accepted approaches aimed at tackling wicked problems and maintaining control over complex human being-digital networks.
Values-based system:
Develop policies to assure AI will be directed at 'humanness' and common good
Adopt a 'moonshot mentality' to build inclusive, decentralized intelligent digital networks 'imbued with empathy' that assistance humans aggressively ensure that technology meets social and ethical responsibilities. Some new level of regulatory and certification process will be necessary.
Prioritize people:
Alter economical and political systems to better aid humans 'race with the robots'
Reorganize economic and political systems toward the goal of expanding humans' capacities and capabilities in order to heighten man/AI collaboration and staunch trends that would compromise homo relevance in the face of programmed intelligence.

PEW Enquiry CENTER AND ELON UNIVERSITY'South IMAGINING THE Net CENTER

Specifically, participants were asked to consider the following:

"Please think forward to the year 2030. Analysts expect that people volition become even more than dependent on networked artificial intelligence (AI) in complex digital systems. Some say nosotros volition proceed on the historic arc of augmenting our lives with more often than not positive results as we widely implement these networked tools. Some say our increasing dependence on these AI and related systems is likely to lead to widespread difficulties.

Our question: Past 2030, do you call up it is near probable that advancing AI and related technology systems will heighten human capacities and empower them? That is, most of the time, will well-nigh people be better off than they are today? Or is it most likely that advancing AI and related technology systems volition lessen human autonomy and agency to such an extent that most people will not be ameliorate off than the way things are today?"

Overall, and despite the downsides they fear, 63% of respondents in this canvassing said they are hopeful that almost individuals will be more often than not better off in 2030, and 37% said people will non be better off.

A number of the thought leaders who participated in this canvassing said humans' expanding reliance on technological systems will but go well if close attending is paid to how these tools, platforms and networks are engineered, distributed and updated. Some of the powerful, overarching answers included those from:

Sonia Katyal, co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology and a fellow member of the inaugural U.S. Commerce Department Digital Economy Board of Advisors, predicted, "In 2030, the greatest set of questions volition involve how perceptions of AI and their application volition influence the trajectory of civil rights in the time to come. Questions about privacy, speech, the right of associates and technological construction of personhood will all re-emerge in this new AI context, throwing into question our deepest-held beliefs about equality and opportunity for all. Who will benefit and who volition exist disadvantaged in this new globe depends on how broadly we analyze these questions today, for the time to come."

We need to work aggressively to make sure applied science matches our values.Erik Brynjolfsson

Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy and author of "Automobile, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Futurity," said, "AI and related technologies have already accomplished superhuman performance in many areas, and there is little dubiety that their capabilities will improve, probably very significantly, by 2030. … I think it is more probable than non that nosotros will use this power to brand the earth a better place. For instance, we can nigh eliminate global poverty, massively reduce disease and provide ameliorate education to virtually anybody on the planet. That said, AI and ML [auto learning] tin too be used to increasingly concentrate wealth and power, leaving many people behind, and to create even more horrifying weapons. Neither event is inevitable, so the right question is not 'What will happen?' merely 'What will we choose to do?' Nosotros need to work aggressively to make sure engineering matches our values. This can and must be done at all levels, from government, to concern, to academia, and to private choices."

Bryan Johnson, founder and CEO of Kernel, a leading developer of advanced neural interfaces, and OS Fund, a venture capital firm, said, "I strongly believe the reply depends on whether we tin can shift our economical systems toward prioritizing radical human comeback and staunching the trend toward human irrelevance in the face of AI. I don't hateful just jobs; I hateful truthful, existential irrelevance, which is the end consequence of not prioritizing homo well-existence and cognition."

Marina Gorbis, executive manager of the Found for the Futurity, said, "Without meaning changes in our political economy and information governance regimes [AI] is likely to create greater economic inequalities, more surveillance and more programmed and non-human-centric interactions. Every time we programme our environments, we finish up programming ourselves and our interactions. Humans have to go more standardized, removing serendipity and ambiguity from our interactions. And this ambivalence and complexity is what is the essence of being human."

Judith Donath, writer of "The Social Machine, Designs for Living Online" and faculty fellow at Harvard University'due south Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, commented, "Past 2030, most social situations will be facilitated by bots – intelligent-seeming programs that collaborate with usa in human-similar means. At habitation, parents will engage skilled bots to help kids with homework and catalyze dinner conversations. At piece of work, bots will run meetings. A bot confidant will be considered essential for psychological well-being, and we'll increasingly plow to such companions for advice ranging from what to habiliment to whom to marry. Nosotros humans care deeply about how others see us – and the others whose approval nosotros seek will increasingly be artificial. By so, the difference betwixt humans and bots volition accept blurred considerably. Via screen and project, the voice, appearance and behaviors of bots volition be duplicate from those of humans, and fifty-fifty physical robots, though obviously non-human, will exist and so assuredly sincere that our impression of them as thinking, feeling beings, on par with or superior to ourselves, volition exist unshaken. Adding to the ambivalence, our ain communication will be heavily augmented: Programs volition compose many of our messages and our online/AR appearance will [be] computationally crafted. (Raw, unaided human speech and demeanor volition seem embarrassingly clunky, wearisome and unsophisticated.) Aided by their access to vast troves of information about each of us, bots will far surpass humans in their ability to attract and persuade us. Able to mimic emotion expertly, they'll never exist overcome by feelings: If they blurt something out in anger, it volition be considering that behavior was calculated to exist the well-nigh efficacious way of advancing whatever goals they had 'in heed.' But what are those goals? Artificially intelligent companions will cultivate the impression that social goals similar to our own motivate them – to be held in good regard, whether as a love friend, an admired dominate, etc. Just their real collaboration volition exist with the humans and institutions that control them. Similar their forebears today, these will be sellers of goods who employ them to stimulate consumption and politicians who commission them to sway opinions."

Andrew McLaughlin, executive director of the Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale University, previously deputy master applied science officer of the U.s.a. for President Barack Obama and global public policy pb for Google, wrote, "2030 is not far in the time to come. My sense is that innovations similar the internet and networked AI accept massive brusque-term benefits, along with long-term negatives that tin can take decades to be recognizable. AI will drive a vast range of efficiency optimizations merely likewise enable hidden bigotry and arbitrary penalty of individuals in areas like insurance, job seeking and performance assessment."

Michael Thou. Roberts, first president and CEO of the Cyberspace Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and Internet Hall of Fame member, wrote, "The range of opportunities for intelligent agents to augment human intelligence is still virtually unlimited. The major event is that the more convenient an amanuensis is, the more it needs to know nigh you – preferences, timing, capacities, etc. – which creates a tradeoff of more help requires more than intrusion. This is non a black-and-white upshot – the shades of greyness and associated remedies will be argued endlessly. The record to date is that convenience overwhelms privacy. I suspect that volition continue."

danah boyd, a main researcher for Microsoft and founder and president of the Data & Society Research Constitute, said, "AI is a tool that volition be used by humans for all sorts of purposes, including in the pursuit of ability. At that place will exist abuses of power that involve AI, but equally there will be advances in scientific discipline and humanitarian efforts that also involve AI. Unfortunately, in that location are certain trend lines that are probable to create massive instability. Take, for example, climatic change and climate migration. This volition further destabilize Europe and the U.Southward., and I wait that, in panic, we will see AI be used in harmful ways in light of other geopolitical crises."

Amy Webb, founder of the Future Today Institute and professor of strategic foresight at New York University, commented, "The social safety net structures currently in place in the U.S. and in many other countries around the globe weren't designed for our transition to AI. The transition through AI will last the side by side 50 years or more. As we move farther into this third era of computing, and as every unmarried industry becomes more securely entrenched with AI systems, we volition need new hybrid-skilled knowledge workers who can operate in jobs that accept never needed to exist before. We'll need farmers who know how to piece of work with big information sets. Oncologists trained every bit robotocists. Biologists trained as electrical engineers. We won't need to prepare our workforce just once, with a few changes to the curriculum. Every bit AI matures, nosotros will need a responsive workforce, capable of adapting to new processes, systems and tools every few years. The demand for these fields will ascend faster than our labor departments, schools and universities are acknowledging. It's easy to look back on history through the lens of present – and to overlook the social unrest caused by widespread technological unemployment. We need to address a difficult truth that few are willing to utter aloud: AI will somewhen cause a large number of people to be permanently out of piece of work. But as generations earlier witnessed sweeping changes during and in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, the rapid stride of technology will likely mean that Infant Boomers and the oldest members of Gen X – peculiarly those whose jobs can be replicated past robots – won't be able to retrain for other kinds of work without a meaning investment of time and effort."

Barry Chudakov, founder and principal of Sertain Research, commented, "Past 2030 the homo-auto/AI collaboration will be a necessary tool to manage and counter the furnishings of multiple simultaneous accelerations: wide technology advocacy, globalization, climate change and attendant global migrations. In the by, human societies managed change through gut and intuition, just as Eric Teller, CEO of Google 10, has said, 'Our societal structures are declining to go on footstep with the rate of change.' To go on pace with that modify and to manage a growing list of 'wicked bug' by 2030, AI – or using Joi Ito's phrase, extended intelligence – will value and revalue virtually every area of human behavior and interaction. AI and advancing technologies volition modify our response framework and time frames (which in plough, changes our sense of time). Where once social interaction happened in places – work, school, church, family unit environments – social interactions will increasingly happen in continuous, simultaneous fourth dimension. If we are fortunate, nosotros will follow the 23 Asilomar AI Principles outlined by the Future of Life Institute and volition work toward 'non undirected intelligence but benign intelligence.' Akin to nuclear deterrence stemming from mutually assured destruction, AI and related technology systems constitute a strength for a moral renaissance. We must embrace that moral renaissance, or nosotros volition face up moral conundrums that could bring virtually human demise. … My greatest hope for human being-machine/AI collaboration constitutes a moral and ethical renaissance – we adopt a moonshot mentality and lock arms to prepare for the accelerations coming at united states of america. My greatest fearfulness is that nosotros adopt the logic of our emerging technologies – instant response, isolation behind screens, countless comparison of self-worth, faux self-presentation – without thinking or responding smartly."

John C. Havens, executive director of the IEEE Global Initiative on Ideals of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems and the Council on Extended Intelligence, wrote, "Now, in 2018, a majority of people around the world can't admission their data, so any 'human-AI augmentation' discussions ignore the disquisitional context of who actually controls people'southward information and identity. Presently it volition be extremely difficult to identify any autonomous or intelligent systems whose algorithms don't collaborate with human information in one class or some other."

At pale is cipher less than what sort of society we want to alive in and how we experience our humanity.Batya Friedman

Batya Friedman, a human-computer interaction professor at the Academy of Washington's Information School, wrote, "Our scientific and technological capacities have and will go on to far surpass our moral ones – that is our power to use wisely and humanely the knowledge and tools that nosotros develop. … Automated warfare – when democratic weapons kill human beings without homo engagement – can atomic number 82 to a lack of responsibility for taking the enemy's life or even knowledge that an enemy's life has been taken. At stake is nothing less than what sort of lodge nosotros want to alive in and how nosotros experience our humanity."

Greg Shannon, master scientist for the CERT Division at Carnegie Mellon University, said, "Ameliorate/worse will appear 4:1 with the long-term ratio 2:1. AI will do well for repetitive work where 'close' will be good enough and humans dislike the work. … Life will definitely be amend every bit AI extends lifetimes, from health apps that intelligently 'nudge' us to health, to warnings about impending heart/stroke events, to automated health care for the underserved (remote) and those who need extended care (elderberry care). Every bit to liberty, at that place are clear risks. AI affects agency by creating entities with meaningful intellectual capabilities for monitoring, enforcing and fifty-fifty punishing individuals. Those who know how to use it will have immense potential ability over those who don't/tin't. Future happiness is really unclear. Some volition cede their agency to AI in games, piece of work and community, much similar the opioid crisis steals agency today. On the other hand, many will be freed from mundane, unengaging tasks/jobs. If elements of customs happiness are part of AI objective functions, so AI could catalyze an explosion of happiness."

Kostas Alexandridis, writer of "Exploring Complex Dynamics in Multi-agent-based Intelligent Systems," predicted, "Many of our day-to-twenty-four hour period decisions will be automated with minimal intervention by the terminate-user. Autonomy and/or independence will be sacrificed and replaced by convenience. Newer generations of citizens will become more and more dependent on networked AI structures and processes. There are challenges that need to be addressed in terms of critical thinking and heterogeneity. Networked interdependence will, more probable than not, increment our vulnerability to cyberattacks. There is as well a real likelihood that there will exist sharper divisions between digital 'haves' and 'accept-nots,' as well as amidst technologically dependent digital infrastructures. Finally, in that location is the question of the new 'commanding heights' of the digital network infrastructure's ownership and control."

Oscar Gandy, emeritus professor of advice at the Academy of Pennsylvania, responded, "We already face an ungranted assumption when nosotros are asked to imagine human-automobile 'collaboration.' Interaction is a bit different, merely notwithstanding tainted by the grant of a form of identity – maybe fifty-fifty personhood – to machines that nosotros will employ to make our manner through all sorts of opportunities and challenges. The problems we will face in the time to come are quite similar to the problems we currently face when we rely upon 'others' (including technological systems, devices and networks) to acquire things nosotros value and avoid those other things (that we might, or might not be enlightened of)."

James Scofield O'Rourke, a professor of direction at the University of Notre Matriarch, said, "Engineering has, throughout recorded history, been a largely neutral concept. The question of its value has always been dependent on its application. For what purpose will AI and other technological advances be used? Everything from gunpowder to internal combustion engines to nuclear fission has been applied in both helpful and destructive ways. Bold we can contain or control AI (and not the other way around), the answer to whether we'll exist improve off depends entirely on us (or our progeny). 'The fault, dearest Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.'"

Simon Biggs, a professor of interdisciplinary arts at the Academy of Edinburgh, said, "AI volition function to augment human capabilities. The trouble is not with AI but with humans. Equally a species we are aggressive, competitive and lazy. Nosotros are also empathic, customs minded and (sometimes) cocky-sacrificing. We have many other attributes. These will all be amplified. Given historical precedent, one would have to presume it will exist our worst qualities that are augmented. My expectation is that in 2030 AI will be in routine use to fight wars and kill people, far more than effectively than we tin can currently kill. As societies we volition be less affected by this equally we currently are, as we will non be doing the fighting and killing ourselves. Our capacity to change our behaviour, subject to empathy and an associated ethical framework, will be reduced by the disassociation between our agency and the act of killing. We cannot expect our AI systems to exist ethical on our behalf – they won't be, as they will exist designed to kill efficiently, non thoughtfully. My other primary concern is to exercise with surveillance and control. The advent of Cathay's Social Credit System (SCS) is an indicator of what it likely to come up. We will exist within an SCS equally AI constructs hybrid instances of ourselves that may or may non resemble who we are. But our rights and affordances as individuals will be determined by the SCS. This is the Orwellian nightmare realised."

Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation, responded, "AI will continue to concentrate power and wealth in the easily of a few big monopolies based on the U.Southward. and Red china. Most people – and parts of the world – will be worse off."

William Uricchio, media scholar and professor of comparative media studies at MIT, commented, "AI and its related applications face iii problems: development at the speed of Moore's Police force, development in the hands of a technological and economic elite, and development without benefit of an informed or engaged public. The public is reduced to a collective of consumers awaiting the adjacent technology. Whose notion of 'progress' will prevail? Nosotros have ample testify of AI existence used to drive profits, regardless of implications for long-held values; to enhance governmental command and even score citizens' 'social credit' without input from citizens themselves. Like technologies before it, AI is agnostic. Its deployment rests in the hands of society. Only absent an AI-literate public, the determination of how best to deploy AI will fall to special interests. Volition this mean equitable deployment, the amelioration of social injustice and AI in the public service? Because the answer to this question is social rather than technological, I'm pessimistic. The prepare? We need to develop an AI-literate public, which means focused attention in the educational sector and in public-facing media. We need to assure diversity in the evolution of AI technologies. And until the public, its elected representatives and their legal and regulatory regimes can become up to speed with these fast-moving developments we need to do caution and oversight in AI's development."

The residue of this report is divided into three sections that describe from hundreds of additional respondents' hopeful and disquisitional observations: ane) concerns nearly human being-AI evolution, 2) suggested solutions to address AI's bear upon, and 3) expectations of what life will be like in 2030, including respondents' positive outlooks on the quality of life and the future of work, health care and education. Some responses are lightly edited for style.