Artificial Intelligence: The 3 Big Trends to Watch in 2017

by  Hope Reese,  TechRepublic

In 2016, the White House recognized the importance of AI at its Frontiers Conference. The concept of driverless cars became a reality, with Uber’s self-driving fleet in Pittsburgh and Tesla’s new models equipped with the hardware for full autonomy. Google’s DeepMind platform, AlphaGo, beat the world champion of the game—10 years ahead of predictions.

Experts expect artificial intelligence (AI) trends to progress in three major areas in 2017, with University of Maryland professor Marie desJardins anticipating “increasing use of machine learning and knowledge-based modeling methods” in the coming year.

Duke University professor Vince Conitzer envisions growing interest–and concern–from the general public on AI’s societal ramifications as a result of “specific new technological developments and their failures.”

Meanwhile, Sundown AI CEO Fabio Cardenas thinks instances of “AI going rogue” could become a fact of life in 2017, ranging from system-hacking AI created to commit fraud to hackers’ introduction of bias and exemptions into existing AI to subvert its predictive capabilities. Roman Yampolskiy, director of the University of Louisville’s Cybersecurity Lab, warns “AI failures will grow in frequency and severity proportionate to AI’s capability.”

The third trend experts foresee is increased concentration on AI’s moral and ethical implications. “The traditional AI community within computer science will increasingly address societal and moral issues in their work,” Conitzer predicts. Professor Toby Walsh at Australia’s University of New South Wales expects to see an accidental fatality caused by a driverless car highlighting the value of such issues as steps are taken to develop and regulate AI.  Read the report.