Robots in the future 'will make internet feel like a dress rehearsal'

Baroness Joanna Shields: "I truly believe this is the most exciting time to be alive"
Future robots must be built with the very highest ethical standards

The 20th century’s internet revolution with data privacy and security concerns will feel like a “dress rehearsal” compared with when super-robots start running our lives, a former government minister has warned.

Joanna Shields told a London audience that humanity was “about to unlock an incredibly powerful force” as artificial intelligence software becomes increasingly deployed to treat the sick and assist workers.

Speaking at the CogX tech festival in Wapping, the former Home Office minister described the benefits and risks of the next digital revolution as “bigger than anything we’ve ever seen”, particularly for health, poverty, food, climate change and clean energy.

Baroness Shields, chief executive of King’s Cross-based health tech and drug discovery firm BenevolentAI, describes herself as “a tech utopian” and was formerly the parliamentary under secretary of state for internet safety and security.

She said: “I truly believe this is the most exciting time to be alive and we have the potential to do good at a scale unlike any time in human history. But as we develop the next wave of technologies and apply AI to literally everything that we do, use and experience, we have to be careful what we optimise for and who benefits from this optimisation.

"We need to think about how we ensure beneficial outcomes for all, and how this time we keep power in check. Compared to AI, the digital revolution with its huge issues around data, privacy and security, will seem like a dress rehearsal. We are about to unlock an incredibly powerful force.

“If the consensus is that AI is bigger than anything we’ve ever seen, it follows that its benefits, and the risks it carries, will be magnified too.”

She suggested that questions must be asked of AI now before humans become locked into reliance on robotic automation, and to combat data-mining tech monopolies who “we forgot to ask and answer” serious questions of earlier in the internet age.

Baroness Shields added that with a “hunger for monetisation” came dangers we had become reliant on “one technology or platform to dominate”.

The Tory peer urged tech giants coding their artificial creations to ensure they are “of the very highest ethical standards known to humankind”.

She said: “Today we already have wearable devices, virtual and augmented reality, biomedical implants, robots and someday soon perhaps, a brain-computer interface.”

The former minister also asked: “Have we already given machines more power than we would like to admit, perhaps more power than we are even aware of?”

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