Halloween

21 Posts

Dozens of toxic barrels on a road and a witch behind
Halloween

Foundations of Evil: The Fear of Weapons of Mass Destruction Designed by AI

A growing number of AI models can be put to purposes their designers didn’t envision. Does that include heinous deeds?
Office with coworkers transformed into mythical creatures like vampires, ghosts and werewolves
Halloween

Your Coworkers Aren’t Human: Confronting the Fear of a White Collar AI Takeover

The new remote administrative assistant is a little too perky, hardworking, and efficient. Is it because he’s a bot?
Ghost controlling a humanoid marionette during a job interview with a female candidate
Halloween

Inhuman Resources: Confronting the Fear of AI-Powered Hiring in 2022

Companies are using AI to screen and even interview job applicants. What happens when out-of-control algorithms are the human resources department?
Person with a sad face in front of an abandoned Chip's Candies factory
Halloween

No More GPUs: Confronting the Fear of a Global Chip Shortage in 2022

Advanced AI requires advanced hardware. What if the global supply of high-end AI chips dries up? Most of the world’s advanced AI processors are manufactured in Taiwan, where tension with mainland China is rising.
Illustration of Frankenstein connected to many chemical elements inside of a lab
Halloween

The Black Box Awakens: Confronting the Fear of Self-Aware AI in 2022

AI researchers are starting to see ghosts in their machines. Are they hallucinations, or does a dawning consciousness haunt the trained weights?
Illustration showing a witch cooking a copy of the Mona Lisa wearing a witch hat)
Halloween

Artistry Is Obsolete: Is AI Making Human Artists Obsolete?

Is human creativity being replaced by the synthetic equivalent? The fear: AI is cranking out increasingly sophisticated visual, musical, and literary works. AI-generated media will flood the market, squeezing out human artists and depriving the world of their creativity.
Illustration showing a kid being followed during Trick-or-treating
Halloween

Democracies Embrace Surveillance: AI Increasingly Spies on Citizens of Western Democracies

What if AI-enabled monitoring isn’t just for dictators and despots?The fear: Under the pretext of maintaining law and order, even countries founded on a commitment to individual rights allow police to take advantage of smart-city infrastructure and smart-home devices.
Halloween family portrait showing the inheritance of some spooky characteristics
Halloween

New Models Inherit Old Flaws: AI Models May Inherit Flaws From Previous Systems

Is AI becoming inbred? The fear: The best models increasingly are fine-tuned versions of a small number of so-called foundation models that were pretrained on immense quantities of data scraped from the web.
A group of bats throwing missiles from the night sky
Halloween

Killer Robots Are Here: Are AI-Powered Weapons the Future of Warfare?

War is already bad enough. What happens when human combatants are replaced by machines?
Illustration of Thumbzilla destroying a city and shooting lightning from its mouth (T-Rex with Facebook thumbs up)
Halloween

Don’t Be Evil: What if AI Enables Corporations to Become Truly Evil?

Tech companies generally try to be (or to appear to be) socially responsible. Would some rather let AI’s negative impacts slide?
Illustration of a hand putting candy on a trick or treat bag
Halloween

The Black Box Has Dark Corners: Will we ever understand what happens inside black box AI?

Will we ever understand what goes on inside the mind of a neural network?The fear: When AI systems go wrong, no one will be able to explain the reasoning behind their decisions.
Doctor holding candy and kid dressed as a ghost on a wheighing scale
Halloween

Unfair Outcomes Destroy Trust: What could cause widespread backlash against AI?

Will AI that discriminates based on race, gender, or economic status undermine the public’s confidence in the technology? Seduced by the promise of cost savings and data-driven decision making, organizations will deploy biased systems that end up doing real-world damage.
Illustration of a neighborhood haunted by an evil pumpkin and a black cat
Halloween

Giant Models Bankrupt Research: Will training AI become too expensive for most companies?

What if AI requires so much computation that it becomes unaffordable?The fear: Training ever more capable models will become too pricey for all but the richest corporations and government agencies. Rising costs will
Illustration of two witches with half a pumpkin each and the moon behind them
Halloween

The AI Community Splinters: Could geopolitics drive a wedge in the AI community?

Will international rivalries fragment international cooperation in machine learning? Countries competing for AI dominance will lash out at competitors.
Illustration of Frankenstein painting a billboard with the text "Bunnies are the real monsters"
Halloween

AI Spreads Disinformation: Understanding the fear of AI-powered disinformation

Will AI promote lies that deepen social divisions? Propagandists will bait online recommendation algorithms with sensationalized falsehoods. People who snap at the clickbait will be reeled into opposing ideological silos.

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