The prospect of creating artificial intelligence has created a stir inside and outside science communities in recent years. AI’s capacity and perhaps inclination towards good or evil has been hotly debated with notables such as Stephen Hawking weighing in. Today, Carnegie Mellon University, an early pioneer in AI, announced it would create a research center studying the ethics of artificial intelligence.
The new center – the K&L Gates Endowment for Ethics and Computational Technologies – is being funded with a $10M grant from K&L Gates law firm. CMU president Subra Suresh said, “It is not just technology that will determine how this century unfolds. Our future will also be influenced strongly by how humans interact with technology, how we foresee and respond to the unintended consequences of our work, and how we ensure that technology is used to benefit humanity, individually and as a society.”
There’s a good account of the effort in today’s New York Times (New Research Center to Explore Ethics of Artificial Intelligence by John Markoff). It’s noted there that CMU’s AI effort took a hit last year, when “a group of 36 technical staff members and four faculty members left [Carnegie Mellon] to join a new self-driving car laboratory that Uber established in Pittsburgh. The company recently started testing self-driving cars around the city.”
According to the NYT account, university officials said the departing faculty have been replaced and 13 additional professors have been hired since the defections. CMU reports that between 2011 and 2015, Carnegie Mellon faculty and staff created 164 start-up companies.
According to the CMU press release, the funds will support new faculty chairs as well as three new Presidential Fellowships for doctoral students; a biennial conference; the K&L Gates Presidential Scholarship Endowed Fund to recognize undergraduate students’ outstanding achievements and potential for further excellence; and an annual K&L Gates Prize to be awarded to a graduating CMU senior.
Link to NYT article: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/02/technology/new-research-center-to-explore-ethics-of-artificial-intelligence.html
Link to CMU release: http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2016/november/gift.html