NPR

Should You Leave Grandma With The Robot?

Once a technology that treats emotions as data becomes pervasive, we may soon find that data is the only aspect of emotion we come to recognize or value, says astrophysicist Adam Frank.
Source: iStock

Every day, we are inching closer to some kind of artificial intelligence.

At this point, it isn't so important whether we're talking about truly self-conscious machines or not. Advances in big data, machine learning and robotics are all poised to give us a world in which computers are effectively intelligent in terms of how we deal with them.

Should you be scared by this proposition? Based on a lecture I just attended, my answer is: "absolutely, but not in the usual 'robot overlords' kind of way."

Instead, the real fear should be about getting human beings wrong, not getting AI right.

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