Artificial intelligence capabilities have been growing by leaps and bounds in recent years and the United States has been a leader in developing and implementing this type of technology. Last week a House of Representatives panel released a report saying that the US needs to go above and beyond if it wants to continue to be the leading country in the field of artificial intelligence.
The text of the report suggests that the federal government needs to increase funding associated with AI research and development because of AI’s potential to bring meaningful disruption to all sectors of society.
While the US has consistently been a spending leader in terms of research and development ($497B in 2015), China is on track to steal the US’ top spender crown of by the end of 2018. Chinese expenditures are certainly increasing extremely quickly in this department; President Xi Jinping has his eye on 2030 for when China will be a world leader in artificial intelligence.
It’s clear that AI has the potential to disrupt institutions like the job market, and bring efficiencies to processes that were once only carried out by a computer following a set of rules. Where a great deal of focus is being placed, though, is how this technology will be used in the military sphere. AI’s inclusion in warfare brings up a variety of new moral and ethical quandaries that haven’t necessarily been fully explored; and needs a way to fit within the framework of international laws and codes of conduct established through events like the Geneva Convention.
The House report specifically mentions a concern that countries like Russia and China may not explore the ethical implications of how this technology might be used at war.
Extract is happy to be investing in our AI and machine learning capabilities, although they certainly aren’t used for anything like warfare. We use this technology to be able to consistently enhance our data capture rules, allowing our software to produce increasingly high levels of speed and accuracy for your organization. This allows us to retrieve all of the important data from your files, either routing it to where it needs to go, or redacting it to make documents available for public consumption.
If you’d like to learn more about how Extract uses AI and machine learning to produce great results, please reach out today and we’d be happy to have a discussion or show you a demonstration of our software.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: CHRIS MACK
Chris is a Marketing Manager at Extract with experience in product development, data analysis, and both traditional and digital marketing. Chris received his bachelor's degree in English from Bucknell University and has an MBA from the University of Notre Dame. A passionate marketer, Chris strives to make complex ideas more accessible to those around him in a compelling way.