I will be at the Business AI and Robotics event in Helsinki in October.
Work
work-related posts
Press Release on the House of Lords Select Committee Report on AI
PRESS RELEASE
The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (AISB) welcomes the comprehensive report by the House of Lords Select Committee on AI published on 16 April 2018 following a consultation process in the autumn of 2017 to which AISB submitted written evidence. AISB fully supports the key messages conveyed by the principles for an AI Code postulated therein and agrees that AI should be used for the common good and benefit of humanity (Principle 1). AISB would like to emphasise Principle 2 requiring explainable or intelligible AI be made compulsory for AI-based decision support in certain critical areas, as stated in #94 of the report. Principle 5, restricting AI’s autonomous power to hurt, destroy or deceive human beings also finds our full support.
However, some phrases in the principles published as #147 in the report ought to be modified to acknowledge that AI technologies are tools developed by humans. We don’t ‘work alongside AI’, we use AI to achieve certain goals or outcomes, just as with any other human-made tool. Granting AI an independent human-like existence, even through casual use of language, sets us on a dangerous course towards machines becoming moral patients; things to which we owe some moral duty. For example, Principle 2 should be amended to read ‘AI should be designed to operate on principles …’ to clarify that people are responsible for the design and operation of AI systems.
Also, Principles 3 and 4 warrant some comment:
AI cannot legally be used to diminish rights or privacy if applied according to existing or future data protection regulations and other legislation as long as there is human responsibility for the AI. We do not recommend granting any AI human rights (and responsibilities), not least since this will inevitably open up legal loopholes.
A right to education in the sense of Principle 4 needs to be aided by a counterpart stating certain restrictions to AI. A right for humans to receive the education to flourish economically without further explanation is not helpful, since often the use of AI is economically motivated. It is important that humans should use AI-based tools to tackle important problems as efficiently as possible while having been given the skills to enable them to remain economically sustainable individuals. It is important to point out that the possibilities of flourishing mentally, and emotionally refer to human attributes that should not be hindered by any AI tool, nor should education of humans be lessened by any constraints imposed by (the intent to use) artificial intelligence.
Dr Bertie Müller (AISB Chair), 16 April 2018
http://aisb.org.uk/news/174-lordsai
The Select-Committee report can be found here (HTML): Report of Session 2017-19 – AI in the UK: ready, willing and able? or as PDF: PDF version Report of Session 2017-19 – AI in the UK: ready, willing and able? ( PDF )
AI Europe 2017
Engaging conversations and good feedback on my presentation on the need for responsible and ethical AI working for humanity at AI Europe on 20/21 November 2017.
Panelist at TFM 2017
On 27 September I will be one of the panelists at the Technology for Marketing conference held at the Olympia in London. We will be discussing the role of AI in marketing. Here are the details the panel:
Panellists:
- Jeremy Waite, Evangelist, IBM Watson
- Parry Malm, CEO, Phrasee
- Tom Smith, Senior Manager, Product Marketing EMEA, Salesforce
- Berndt Müller, Chair, AISB (Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour)
Moderated by:
Roland van Breukelen, Director Customer Engagement & Commerce, SAP Hybris
Loebner Prize 2015
On 19 September the 25th annual Loebner Prize in Artificial Intelligence was held at Bletchley Park. Dr Bertie Müller, Senior Lecture in Computing at the University of South Wales and Chairman of the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (AISB), organised this event with the help of further AISB-Committee members for the second time running. Bertie was interviewed by BBC News (broadcast live at 10:28 on 19 September) from Bletchley Park talking about the competition and how the Turing Test was relevant to us more than 60 years after its first publication. The interview and further BBC coverage was part of the week-long Intelligent Machines season across the BBC TV and radio channels. Throughout the day further coverage of the event was provided by the BBC News channel, Sky News, and CBS.
Some of the BBC coverage of the event is archived here and in related posts.
Furthermore, Bertie is quoted in the New Scientist article entitled “Forget the Turing test – there are better ways of judging AI” suggesting alternatives to the Turing Test as a measure of (machine) intelligence.
None of the chatbots managed to fool any of the judges. The prize for the most human-like machine went to Rose (developed by Bruce Wilcox).
Finalists
Steve Worswick
Brian Rigsby
Bruce Wilcox
Ken Hurturbise
Judges
Jacob Aaron – Physical sciences reporter for New Scientist
Rory Callan – Jones
Technology correspondent for the BBC
Brett Marty
– Film Director and Photographer
Ariadne Tampion – Independent Writer and Thinker
Confederates
Paul Beesley
– Software Engineer at ARM
Emily Jones
– Admissions registrar at Moorlands School, Leeds
Paul Sobek
– Software Engineer at Imagination Technologies
Chris Wignall –
Senior Software Developer at Lotus F1 Team
Collaboration anticipated with the HAW (University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg)
The Ambient Intelligence Laboratory at HAW, Germany has offered our research group access to their smart home lab to further our research and test the current version of our agent development framework in an existing life-like situation.The UbiComp-Lab in Hamburg was designed and built to study ubiquitous computing. We are planning to conduct a preliminary visit to ascertain the lab’s capabilities and interfaces so that our current work can be adapted to operate within the lab with a second, longer visit to conduct experiments using our software in the lab.
Connection Science Editorial
Connection Science, Vol. 27.1, now online: weblink
Read editorials from Tony Prescott and Bertie Müller
The Loebner Prize teams up with the AISB and Bletchley Park Museum
A warm welcome in the year of the AISB’s 50th anniversary
It has been an eventful year for the world’s oldest AI society. Interdisciplinary AI has been showcased as a thriving discipline at the hugely successful AISB-50 convention and in the no less successful AISB workshop series. But this is just the AISB’ s everyday business. Two behind-the-scenes events of the ongoing year are promising to have a longer-term effect on AI research and media coverage: A partnership between the AISB and the journal Connection Science published by Taylor and Francis has been arranged in October, and — following the official agreement with Hugh Loebner earlier this year — the decision that AISB would be taking permanent responsibility for running the annual Loebner Prize finals on the premises of Bletchley Park where Alan Turing worked as a code-breaker during World War 2.
We are thrilled that AISB has been chosen to host the longest-running Turing-Test competition started in 1991 and based on Alan Turing’s original conception of the test. Claims in the media that the Turing Test had been passed for the first time this year have left parts of the scientific community unconvinced due to various reasons. The Loebner Prize version of the test offers an established set of rules and even though still in its simpler first stage no submission has managed to pass this stage even 23 years after its inception. Once the it has been passed, the contest will enter a second stage introducing audio/visual components to the conversations. We are looking at some exciting years ahead.
On behalf of the AISB committee, I would like to thank the organisers of this year’s competition, Ed Keedwell and Nir Oren, and would also like to express my gratitude to everyone who has helped make this event possible, in particular Claire Urwin from Bletchley Park Museum, Paul Sant from the University of Bedfordshire, David Levy, and the judges and confederates who volunteered to dedicate their time to the event … and, of course, many thanks to Hugh Loebner without whose organisational and financial support all this would not be possible.
Bletchley Park, November 2014
Dr Berndt “Bertie” Müller (University of South Wales and AISB Chair)
The Loebner Prize Finals take place at Bletchley Park Museum on Saturday, 15 November 2014
dotdotdot …
After the initial launch and its inclusion in the Futures Gallery at the Pierhead Building of the Welsh National Assembly, 1024by768.net will receive another online opening at dotdotdot v2 in London on 21 August: onedotzero
The Vicious Circle
Challenged by some obscure maths notations? Need to know more about functions and how they relate to computer programs? Believe everything is computable? Want to make a computer think or want to think like a computer?
No guaranteed answers here, but sometimes raising more questions clarifies the original ones … Join our mathematical reading group at the University of South Wales. Currently, I am joined by three of our PhD students … intrigued? Just contact me.