Since we live in a machine age, the growing concern is that new technologies like artificial intelligence, cryptocurrencies, autonomous cars, and precision medicine are so powerful, pervasive and evolving that they can become uncontrollable. So how do we overcome it?

New technologies can be potentially scary and bad. It’s a step into the unknown with uncertainty whether it may fail and it takes to integrate into society. Since we live in a machine age, the growing concern is that new technologies like artificial intelligence, cryptocurrencies, autonomous cars, and genetically customised ‘precision medicine’ are so powerful, pervasive, and fast-changing that they become uncontrollable. All this can put society and quite possibly the entire human race in grave danger.

For instance, July 2017 saw Facebook abandon an experiment after two artificially intelligent programs appeared to be chatting to each other in a strange language that only they understood. The two chatbots communicated with one another having created their own changes to English which seemed to make it easier for them to work, but it was mysterious to the supervising human engineers.

The chatbots’ bizarre discussions happened as Facebook challenged them to try and negotiate a trade with one another in attempt to swap items like hats and balls that were all given a certain value. But negotiations quickly broke down as the robots appeared to oddly chant to each other in a pattern of incomprehensible English that didn’t seem to be a glitch. Were the robots becoming uncontrollably too intelligent for their own good?

Even more recently, Amazon’s voice assistant device, Alexa, let out unprompted creepy cackles. The device is designed to respond or act only when prompted by with a wake word that’s “Alexa” or “Amazon”, but this apparent glitch is happening without any prior interaction, spooking Alexa owners.

Alexa is intended to be a domestic device in the home, so the use of voice assistants is often met with caution — voice commands are recorded and sent to the cloud for processing, a system that stokes a fear of eavesdropping, unintended or otherwise. Incidents like this and at Facebook, where an AI assistant seems to rebel against its owner, naturally furthers such concern.

Upon that note, tech pioneer Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, has  said, "AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilisation." He has also said, in relation to a self driving car ,“You'd test the living daylights out of it before you let it on the streets.”

To counteract that and to control the different levels of future technological uncertainty before going to market, would be to apply regulations to the technology sector. After all, within any industry, regulation is necessary to keep things in check — it should not be too restrictive, but obviously progressive.

However, there is a lack of government involvement within technological innovation because government ministers don’t understand it and they don’t know what to do about it. This is starting to change on an international scale with the World Economic Forum which is tackling the dangers of big tech.

Within the UK, there are such organisations like Nesta, an innovation charity which works globally and always in partnership, as they do with Manchester University on the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIoIR). They address the strategic intelligence, governance, and responsible research and innovation aspects of new and emerging technologies.

Organisations supporting innovative entrepreneurs are London Innovators who help radical London-based entrepreneurs and GSMA supporting initiatives that shape the future of mobile communications and expand opportunities for the whole industry. There’s also N77 Society, whose recruited field experts as members assess advancing technological projects’  benefits or dangers to society. They all add a strong filter to adjust and cancel out technology’s bad with good.

All organisations and societies in the the technology field can help develop an ‘innovation culture’ for larger regulatory bodies i.e. government to certainly promote the positive impact of innovations. It can inform and teach public officials who regulate technologies, business people who build them, and citizens who use or are affected by them — to craft inclusive policies that governments or companies can try out.

Overall, technological innovation is necessary. We as humans constantly progress together as a society, country and a world. Throughout time, technology has enhanced our daily lives and we all take it for granted in all areas. Whether it be communication with the Internet and smartphones; travel with planes and motor vehicles or entertainment with televisions and music formats, it’s all there right before us.

The attraction towards more advanced technological innovation is a belief in progress towards an improved or more advanced condition — a brighter future as we all move forward.

Francesco Segramora

16 March 2018