Source Sheet, #3
Sana Masud
Professor Dempster
UNIV 112
21 October 2014
Research Question: What is artificial intelligence? Is the creation of artificial
intelligence ethical?
MLA Citation: Zeng, Daniel. "AI Ethics: Science Fiction Meets Technological Reality."
IEEE Xplore. IEEE, 2015. Web. 25 Oct. 2015.
Background: Daniel Zeng received both an M.S. and Ph.D. degree in industrial
administration from Carnegie Mellon University and the B.S. degree in economics and
operations research from the University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei,
China. He is a Professor and Honeywell Fellow in the Department of Management
Information Systems at the University of Arizona and a Research Professor at the
Institute of Automation in the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Zeng's research interests
include intelligence and security informatics, spatial-temporal data analysis, infectious
disease informatics, social computing, recommender systems, software agents, and
applied operations research and game theory with application in e-commerce and online
advertising systems.
Main Claim: Interest of AI and possibility of it becoming a reality are very real.
Sub Claims:
1. Many doomsday stories surround AIs.
2. Creating Ai affects human employment
3. Crime and intent become blurred when AI are introduced.
4. Robots take in information to grow, creating a privacy breach.
5. Fully autonomous robots can pose vital threat to civilians.
6. Emotional attachment to robots could pose problems
Evidence:
1. Google established internal AI ethics board.
2. Algorithmic trading created the US equity market flash crash in May 2010.
3. Driverless cars create a debate on who will be charged in case of a crash.
4. Video showing people kicking robot dog created huge outrage.
5. Multi lateral talks about killer robots opened at the UN in May 2014
6. The Skunk Riot Control Copter, a drone armed with plastic bullets and pepper
spray built by a South African company, has been sold to an international mining
company interested in using it to suppress labor riots.
7. Robots are being used with children and adults.
Quotations & Responses:
 “A prevailing thought is that although we don’t necessarily need to care about
robot rights, abusing robots (just as abusing animals) very likely will make people
more abusive toward other people. As such, protecting robot rights indirectly
Source Sheet, #3
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protects human rights.” This quote speaks to the importance of upholding robot
rights, as it will then reinforce human rights.
“Stephen Hawking is a leading voice cautioning about the potential threats posed
by AI, famously saying, “The development of full artificial intelligence could
spell the end of the human race.””
“However, although traditional economic agents—the providers of cheap labor
and “ordinary” capitalists— might be increasingly squeezed by automation, a new
group of people who can innovate, design, and develop new products, services,
and business models might emerge as winners in the new knowledge economy.”
This quote speaks to the AI in the US equity market. By implementing robots,
capitalists aren’t in charge, rather, innovators and designers are.
“As autonomous, intelligent, and adaptive AI entities roam across both the
physical and cyber worlds, how will we define crime and intent?” This quote
brings up an excellent point. Will robots be put on trial? Is an AI responsible for
crime or is its designer?
Questions & Conclusions: This source gives a great overview and outline of the
biggest threads of discussion in AI. The increasing popularity of this topic has driven
many conversations around commanding and regulating this new technology.