Oct 30, 2019

Welcome to the Halloween edition of The Batch! I promised last week to share some common reasons for AI project failures. But first, let’s start with some of the least common reasons.

Could humanity be destroyed by its own creation? If binary code running on a computer awakens into sentience, it will be able to think better than humans. It may even be able to improve its own software and hardware.

Will AI fakery erode public trust in the key social institutions? Generative models will flood media outlets with convincing but false photos, videos, ads, and news stories. The ensuing crisis of authority will lead to widespread distrust in everything from the financial system to democracy itself.

What does freedom mean when computers know your face and track your movements? Artificial intelligence will boost the power of surveillance, effectively making privacy obsolete and opening the door to a wide range of abuses.

Will biases in training data unwittingly turn AI into a tool for persecution? Bias encoded in software used by nominally objective institutions like, say, the justice or education systems will become impossible to root out.

From blue collar laborers to lab coated professionals, is any job safe from AI? AI will exceed human performance at a wide range of activities. Huge populations will become jobless.

Could the flood of hype for artificial intelligence lead to a catastrophic collapse in funding? AI will fail to deliver on promises inflated by businesses and researchers. Investors will migrate to greener pastures, and AI Winter will descend.

Welcome to the Halloween edition of The Batch! I promised last week to share some common reasons for AI project failures. But first, let’s start with some of the least common reasons.