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The fears of rogue artificial intelligence may seem like a new concern, with recent developments such as ChatGPT and self-driving cars but tales of sentient and potentially malevolent technology date back not just decades, but millennia.

According to historians, these themes were around long before Arnold Schwarzenegger played the role of a killer robot and travelled back in time to menace Sarah Connor in 1984's The Terminator.

"People had been thinking about these kinds of devices and inventions and innovations before the technology existed," Adrienne Mayor, a historian of ancient science and a classical folklorist at Stanford University, told Tapestry host Mary Hynes.

Stories such as Pandora in ancient Greece, the murderous rampage of a golem in Prague, and Frankenstein's monster are just some of the many dots throughout history that connect our fear of inanimate creations coming to life.

Mayor, whose 2018 book Gods and Robots explores the subject, says some of these legends come with warnings.

One of the oldest tales dates back to ancient Greece and the story of Pandora. Mayor says in the original story, told by Greek poet Hesiod, Zeus wanted to punish humankind for accepting the gift of fire.

So Zeus commissioned Hephaestus the god of fire, blacksmiths, craftsmenand volcanoes to create an artificial woman named Pandora that Zeus described as evil disguised as beauty.

"Zeus sent this lifelike fembot to Earth carrying this jar filled with misery for mortals," said Mayor. "Pandora's mission was to insinuate herself into human society and then open that jar and release all the misery."

In Hesiod's story, Pandora did just that. Prometheus's brother, Epimetheus, fell for the beauty of Pandora, despite his brother's warning. In Greek, Prometheus means looking ahead, while Epimetheus means hindsight.

"We've got foresight versus hindsight right there in one of the oldest myths about artificial life," said Mayor.

(Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

"Prometheans today are concerned about our future with AI and robotics, in contrast to the overly optimistic Epimetheans, who are easily dazzled by the short-term gains."

Mayor says Pandora isn't the only tale about artificial intelligence in Greek mythology. There's also the story of Talos, the first depiction of a robot-like being in Western literature. Talos was designed by Hephaestus to protect the island of Crete.

"He could pick up and hurl boulders to sink the enemy ships. And then if anyone did come ashore, he could heat his bronze body to red hot and then grab them up and hug them to himself and roast them alive," said Mayor.

But in the story of Jason and the Argonauts, they were able to remove the bolt on Talos's ankle to defeat him.

"So Talos was made by technology and taken down by technology. They took out the bolt, the power source bled out and the giant robot was destroyed," said Mayor.

Amir Vudka, a lecturer at the department of media studies at the University of Amsterdam, says there are a lot of examples of inanimate objects coming to life and causing chaos, like the story of the golem of Prague.

Vudka says there are many versions of the legend, but in all of them, a rabbi uses magic to create a golem. At first, the golem is a good servant, operating as a kind of robot. In some cases, it would protect people. In other stories, it would just help the rabbi with labour. But it always goes wrong.

(Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

"The golem always gets out of control, eventually, kind of rebelling against his master [and] brings a lot of destruction, death, mayhem," said Vudka.

"What keeps repeating is that perhaps it's not a good idea to create something like this."

These stories repeat throughout culture, says Vudka. From Frankenstien's monster, to robots in Blade Runner and The Terminator, humans keep telling the tale of artificial intelligence that rebels.

"We are very afraid of the unknown. In general, I think humans are usually afraid of what they don't know, of otherness," said Vudka.

Vudka says there is an important lesson to be learned from the tale of the golem. In the story of the rabbi creating the golem, the rabbi knows the words to reverse the spell and end the golem's rampage.

"You have to know the spell to close it. Otherwise, what do you do when it goes out of control? It might be too late," said Vudka.

That's why, he says, it's important we know how to control the technology we create.

In the story of Pandora, the jar that brought misery to people serves as a black box.Mayor says people know less and less about the technology they use, and ChatGPT can similarly be considered a black box.

(Marco Bertorello/AFP via Getty Images)

"There's a tendency for technology to be able to access unimaginably vast and complex data, and then make decisions based on that," said Mayor. "Both the users and the makers will be in the dark as to how those decisions were made by the AI."

Mayor says it's important that we remember that these technological advancements are tools, not new life. She says it puts the responsibility of what AI does onto the creators, not the creations themselves.

And, she says, it shouldn't all be thought of as bad or evil. She said there are also examples of myths where technology brings nothing but blessings.

In Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus uses what is basically a self-driving boat that helps him get home safely.

"There is nothing dubious about this. There's nothing bad. It's labour-saving. It fulfills his deepest wish. And these ships appear to be AI-driven ... and it's hopeful," said Mayor.

Philip Drost is a journalist with the CBC. You can reach him by email at philip.drost@cbc.ca.

Originally posted here:

Fear of AI is an old, old story. Rebelling robots and evil mystery boxes have worried us for millennia - CBC.ca

Artificial intelligence (AI)

Artificial intelligence being used to unpick meanings behind vocal and physical cues of host of creatures

If an unexpected meow, peculiar pose, or unusual twitch of the whiskers leaves you puzzling over what your cat is trying to tell you, artificial intelligence may soon be able to translate.

Scientists are turning to new technology to unpick the meanings behind the vocal and physical cues of a host of animals.

We could use AI to teach us a lot about what animals are trying to say to us, said Daniel Mills, a professor of veterinary behavioural medicine at the University of Lincoln.

Previous work, including by Mills, has shown that cats produce a variety of facial expressions when interacting with humans, and this week researchers revealed felines have a range of 276 facial expressions when interacting with other cats.

However, the facial expressions they produce towards humans look different from those produced towards cats, said Dr Brittany Florkiewicz, an assistant professor of psychology at Lyon College in Arkansas who co-authored the new work.

Mills said the latest research highlighted the complexity of feline facial manoeuvres, adding that new technology could help to unpick them.

As this paper suggests, there is a much greater richness in cat expressions than we appreciate and what AI is good at is classifying images, he said.

One approach, said Mills, was to teach AI to identify specific features such as ear position, which is already known to be important for certain emotions. Another more modern approach is to allow AI to come up with its own rules for classification. While that brings its own challenges, Mills said it could also offer fresh insights.

It could highlight the rules it uses to distinguish data sets, which can show us where to look for the best way to distinguish certain expressions.

Mills and colleagues are already attempting to use AI to try to tease out certain emotional states from facial expressions in cats, dogs and horses. He said there was no shortage of videos to work with a truth universally acknowledged by anyone who has spent time on YouTube.

As well as offering us new ways to understand what our pets are trying to communicate, Mills noted AI could be used for animal welfare, for example to screen the faces of cows for signs of pain as they troop in for milking. In effect, they can have a daily health check of how happy they are, he said.

Among those looking at such applications is Dr Elodie Briefer, an associate professor of ecology and evolution at the University of Copenhagen. Her research has shown AI can be trained to classify pig vocalisations to distinguish between pigs that are happy and those that are not. The idea, Briefer said, was that such tools could be used on farms to track the welfare of the animals.

During an increase in negative calls, the farmer can check whats going on, or if he or she implements some new measures like enrichment he or she can see if there is increasing positive calls, for example, she said.

Briefer added that her team were hoping in future work to couple such findings with AI-based analysis of pigs body postures and expressions. You can get much more information if you use AI on both vocalisations and videos to study facial expressions and body movements, she said.

There are wider implications of using AI to understand animal communication, including to aid conservation.

Mills said the technology could also provide insights into more fundamental biology and psychology, including understanding the origins of some human traits.

Briefer agreed. Among other work, her team is using AI to classify vocalisations in animals such as zebras, white rhinos and parakeets to explore how they communicate. She also said researchers were using AI to explore the size of animals call repertoires and how these calls are combined in a sort of rudimentary syntax to convey information.

That could help us to get to know how did we come up with such huge language skills compared with our closest relatives, she said.

Prof Christian Rutz, from the University of St Andrews, also said the technology had great potential. Machine-learning methods will transform our understanding of animal communication, creating valuable opportunities to improve wildlife conservation and animal welfare, he said.

But, as Rutz and his colleagues have recently noted, there could be potential pitfalls too not least should researchers attempt communication with animals in their own language before such signals are fully understood. We urgently need to agree on ethical standards for this kind of work to prevent unintended harm or misuse, he said.

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Read more from the original source:

AI can teach us a lot: scientists say cats expressions richer than imagined and aim to translate them - The Guardian

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Take a chance on AI, says Abba's Bjrn, but protect the musicians - Financial Times

A man is seen using the LinkedIn app on a mobile device and a laptop computer in this illustration photo on 17 October, 2023.

Jaap Arriens | Nurphoto | Getty Images

LinkedIn debuted an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot Wednesday that it's billing as a "job seeker coach," and unveiled other generative AI tools for Premium members.

The rollouts were tied to an announcement from LinkedIn that its platform surpassed 1 billion members. For months, the Microsoft-owned company has been bolstering its focus on tools like automated recruiter messages, job descriptions and AI-powered profile writing suggestions.

The new AI chatbot, which aims in part to help users gauge whether a job application is worth their time, is powered by OpenAI's GPT-4 and began rolling out to some Premium users Wednesday. Microsoft has invested billions of dollars into OpenAI.

LinkedIn's engineering team had to put hefty resources on the platform side to reduce latency, according to Erran Berger, LinkedIn's vice president of product engineering.

"We had to build a lot of stuff on our end to work around that and to make this a snappy experience," Berger told CNBC in an interview. "When you're having these conversational experiences, sometimes it's almost like search you expect it to be instant. And so there's real platform capabilities we had to develop to make that possible."

LinkedIn is trying to reaccelerate revenue growth after eight straight quarters of slowing expansion. Two weeks ago the company announced nearly 700 job cuts, with most coming from the engineering unit.

Users of the new chatbot can launch it from a job posting by selecting one of a few questions, such as "Am I a good fit for this job?" and "How can I best position myself for this job?" The former would prompt the tool to analyze a user's LinkedIn profile and experience, with answers like, "Your profile shows that you have extensive experience in marketing and event planning, which is relevant for this role."

The chatbot will also point to potential gaps in a user's experience that could hurt them in the job application process.

"The quality of responses has to be really good for the stakes being as high as they are here, so we don't take that lightly at all," Gyanda Sachdeva, LinkedIn's vice president of product management, told CNBC.

The user can also follow up by asking who works at the company, which will prompt the chatbot to send them a few employee profiles potentially second- or third-degree connections who the user can then message about the opportunity. The message itself can also be drafted using generative AI.

In the past, many uses of AI in hiring or job applications have faced criticism for bias against marginalized communities. One example was Amazon's use of a recruiting engine that reportedly downvoted resumes that included the word "women" or mentioned women's colleges. A separate study by the Harvard Business Review highlighted bias against black candidates in an analysis of respondents' job board recommendations.

"We've invested a lot to make sure that this stays kind of within the guardrails of what meets our responsible AI standards," Berger said. "You couple that with our own AI models for matching jobs, again, which we've been doing for a long time, you get this super-personalized, equity-minded experience for our job seekers."

CNBC's Jordan Novet contributed reporting.

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LinkedIn passes 1 billion members and launches new AI chatbot to help you get a job - CNBC