Table Of ContentMARTIN FORD
ARCHITECTS
OF
INTELLIGENCE
For Xiaoxiao, Elaine, Colin, and Tristan
ARCHITECTS
OF
INTELLIGENCE
THE TRUTH ABOUT AI FROM
THE PEOPLE BUILDING IT
MARTIN FORD
ARCHITECTS OF INTELLIGENCE
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Contents
Introduction ........................................................................ 1
A Brief Introduction to the Vocabulary of Artificial Intelligence .......10
How AI Systems Learn ........................................................11
Yoshua Bengio. ....................................................................17
Stuart J. Russell ...................................................................39
Geoffrey Hinton ..................................................................71
Nick Bostrom .....................................................................97
Yann LeCun ..................................................................... 119
Fei-Fei Li ......................................................................... 145
Demis Hassabis ................................................................. 163
Andrew Ng ..................................................................... 185
Rana el Kaliouby ................................................................ 207
Ray Kurzweil .................................................................... 227
Daniela Rus ...................................................................... 253
James Manyika .................................................................. 271
Gary Marcus ..................................................................... 305
Barbara J. Grosz ................................................................ 333
Judea Pearl ....................................................................... 357
Jeffrey Dean ..................................................................... 375
Daphne Koller .................................................................. 387
David Ferrucci .................................................................. 405
Rodney Brooks .................................................................. 423
Cynthia Breazeal ............................................................... 445
Joshua Tenenbaum .............................................................. 463
Oren Etzioni .................................................................... 493
Bryan Johnson ................................................................... 511
When Will Human-Level AI be Achieved? Survey Results .............. 528
Acknowledgments .............................................................. 530
MARTIN FORD
INTRODUCTION
MARTIN FORD
AUTHOR, FUTURIST
Artificial intelligence is rapidly transitioning from the realm of science fiction to
the reality of our daily lives. Our devices understand what we say, speak to us, and
translate between languages with ever-increasing fluency. AI-powered visual recognition
algorithms are outperforming people and beginning to find applications in everything
from self-driving cars to systems that diagnose cancer in medical images. Major media
organizations increasingly rely on automated journalism to turn raw data into coherent
news stories that are virtually indistinguishable from those written by human journalists.
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ARCHITECTS OF INTELLIGENCE
The list goes on and on, and it is becoming evident that AI is poised to become
one of the most important forces shaping our world. Unlike more specialized
innovations, artificial intelligence is becoming a true general-purpose technology.
In other words, it is evolving into a utility—not unlike electricity—that is likely
to ultimately scale across every industry, every sector of our economy, and nearly
every aspect of science, society and culture.
The demonstrated power of artificial intelligence has, in the last few years,
led to massive media exposure and commentary. Countless news articles,
books, documentary films and television programs breathlessly enumerate AI’s
accomplishments and herald the dawn of a new era. The result has been a sometimes
incomprehensible mixture of careful, evidence-based analysis, together with hype,
speculation and what might be characterized as outright fear-mongering. We are
told that fully autonomous self-driving cars will be sharing our roads in just a few
years—and that millions of jobs for truck, taxi and Uber drivers are on the verge of
vaporizing. Evidence of racial and gender bias has been detected in certain machine
learning algorithms, and concerns about how AI-powered technologies such as
facial recognition will impact privacy seem well-founded. Warnings that robots will
soon be weaponized, or that truly intelligent (or superintelligent) machines might
someday represent an existential threat to humanity, are regularly reported in the
media. A number of very prominent public figures—none of whom are actual AI
experts—have weighed in. Elon Musk has used especially extreme rhetoric, declaring
that AI research is “summoning the demon” and that “AI is more dangerous than
nuclear weapons.” Even less volatile individuals, including Henry Kissinger and the
late Stephen Hawking, have issued dire warnings.
The purpose of this book is to illuminate the field of artificial intelligence—as
well as the opportunities and risks associated with it—by having a series of deep,
wide-ranging conversations with some of the world’s most prominent AI research
scientists and entrepreneurs. Many of these people have made seminal contributions
that directly underlie the transformations we see all around us; others have founded
companies that are pushing the frontiers of AI, robotics and machine learning.
Selecting a list of the most prominent and influential people working in a field is,
of course, a subjective exercise, and without doubt there are many other people
who have made, or are making, critical contributions to the advancement of AI.
Nonetheless, I am confident that if you were to ask nearly anyone with a deep
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MARTIN FORD
knowledge of the field to compose a list of the most important minds who have
shaped contemporary research in artificial intelligence, you would receive a list
of names that substantially overlaps with the individuals interviewed in this book.
The men and women I have included here are truly the architects of machine
intelligence—and, by extension, of the revolution it will soon unleash.
The conversations recorded here are generally open-ended, but are designed to
address some of the most pressing questions that face us as artificial intelligence
continues to advance: What specific AI approaches and technologies are most
promising, and what kind of breakthroughs might we see in the coming years?
Are true thinking machines—or human-level AI—a real possibility and how soon
might such a breakthrough occur? What risks, or threats, associated with artificial
intelligence should we be genuinely concerned about? And how should we address
those concerns? Is there a role for government regulation? Will AI unleash massive
economic and job market disruption, or are these concerns overhyped? Could
superintelligent machines someday break free of our control and pose a genuine
threat? Should we worry about an AI “arms race,” or that other countries with
authoritarian political systems, particularly China, may eventually take the lead?
It goes without saying that no one really knows the answers to these questions. No
one can predict the future. However, the AI experts I’ve spoken to here do know
more about the current state of the technology, as well as the innovations on the
horizon, than virtually anyone else. They often have decades of experience and
have been instrumental in creating the revolution that is now beginning to unfold.
Therefore, their thoughts and opinions deserve to be given significant weight. In
addition to my questions about the field of artificial intelligence and its future, I have
also delved into the backgrounds, career trajectories and current research interests
of each of these individuals, and I believe their diverse origins and varied paths to
prominence will make for fascinating and inspiring reading.
Artificial intelligence is a broad field of study with a number of subdisciplines, and many
of the researchers interviewed here have worked in multiple areas. Some also have deep
experience in other fields, such as the study of human cognition. Nonetheless, what
follows is a brief attempt to create a very rough road map showing how the individuals
interviewed here relate to the most important recent innovations in AI research and
to the challenges that lie ahead. More background information about each person is
available in his or her biography, which is located immediately after the interview.
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