Yoshua Bengio, a Canadian computer scientist who helped pioneer the techniques underpinning much of the current excitement around artificial intelligence (AI), said he is worried about China’s use of AI for surveillance and political control.
Bengio, who is also a cofounder of Montreal-based software company Element AI, said he was concerned about the technology he helped create being used to control people’s behavior and influence their minds.
“This is the 1984 Big Brother scenario,” he said in an interview. “I think it’s becoming more and more scary.”
Bengio, a professor at the University of Montreal, is considered one of the three “godfathers” of deep learning, along with Yann LeCun and Geoff Hinton.
It is a technology that uses neural networks — a kind of software loosely based on the human brain — to make predictions based on data. It is responsible for recent advances in facial recognition, natural language processing, translation and recommendation algorithms.
Deep learning requires a large amount of data to provide examples from which to learn, but China, with its vast population and system of state record-keeping, has a lot of that.
The Chinese government has begun using closed-circuit video cameras and facial recognition to monitor what its citizens do in public, from jaywalking to engaging in political dissent. It has also created a National Credit Information Sharing Platform, which is being used to blacklist rail and air passengers for “anti-social” behavior and is considering expanding uses of this system to other situations.
“The use of your face to track you should be highly regulated,” Bengio said.
Bengio is not alone in his concern about China’s use-cases for AI. Billionaire George Soros used a speech at the World Economic Forum on Jan. 24 to highlight the risks the country’s use of AI poses to civil liberties and minority rights.
Unlike some peers, Bengio, who heads the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms, has resisted the temptation to work for a large, advertising-driven technology company.
Responsible development of AI might require some large technology companies to change the way they operate, he said.
The amount of data large tech companies control is also a concern.
The creation of data trusts — non-profit entities or legal frameworks under which people own their data and allow them to be used only for certain purposes — might be one solution, Bengio said.
If a trust held enough data, it could negotiate better terms with big tech companies that needed them, he said on Thursday during a talk at Amnesty International UK’s office in London.
There were many ways deep-learning software could be used for good, Bengio said.
In Thursday’s talk, he unveiled a project he is working on that uses AI to create augmented-reality images depicting what people’s individual homes or neighborhoods might look like as the result of natural disasters spawned by climate change.
However, he said there was also a risk that the implementation of AI would cause job losses on a scale, and at a speed, that is different from what has happened with other technological innovations.
Governments need to be proactive in thinking about these risks, including considering new ways to redistribute wealth within society, he said.
“Technology, as it gets more powerful, outside of other influences, just leads to more concentration of power and wealth,” Bengio said. “That is bad for democracy, that is bad for social justice and the general well-being of most people.”
SEMICONDUCTORS: The German laser and plasma generator company will expand its local services as its specialized offerings support Taiwan’s semiconductor industries Trumpf SE + Co KG, a global leader in supplying laser technology and plasma generators used in chip production, is expanding its investments in Taiwan in an effort to deeply integrate into the global semiconductor supply chain in the pursuit of growth. The company, headquartered in Ditzingen, Germany, has invested significantly in a newly inaugurated regional technical center for plasma generators in Taoyuan, its latest expansion in Taiwan after being engaged in various industries for more than 25 years. The center, the first of its kind Trumpf built outside Germany, aims to serve customers from Taiwan, Japan, Southeast Asia and South Korea,
Gasoline and diesel prices at domestic fuel stations are to fall NT$0.2 per liter this week, down for a second consecutive week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) announced yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to drop to NT$26.4, NT$27.9 and NT$29.9 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, the companies said in separate statements. The price of premium diesel is to fall to NT$24.8 per liter at CPC stations and NT$24.6 at Formosa pumps, they said. The price adjustments came even as international crude oil prices rose last week, as traders
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which supplies advanced chips to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday reported NT$1.046 trillion (US$33.1 billion) in revenue for last quarter, driven by constantly strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips, falling in the upper end of its forecast. Based on TSMC’s financial guidance, revenue would expand about 22 percent sequentially to the range from US$32.2 billion to US$33.4 billion during the final quarter of 2024, it told investors in October last year. Last year in total, revenue jumped 31.61 percent to NT$3.81 trillion, compared with NT$2.89 trillion generated in the year before, according to
PRECEDENTED TIMES: In news that surely does not shock, AI and tech exports drove a banner for exports last year as Taiwan’s economic growth experienced a flood tide Taiwan’s exports delivered a blockbuster finish to last year with last month’s shipments rising at the second-highest pace on record as demand for artificial intelligence (AI) hardware and advanced computing remained strong, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. Exports surged 43.4 percent from a year earlier to US$62.48 billion last month, extending growth to 26 consecutive months. Imports climbed 14.9 percent to US$43.04 billion, the second-highest monthly level historically, resulting in a trade surplus of US$19.43 billion — more than double that of the year before. Department of Statistics Director-General Beatrice Tsai (蔡美娜) described the performance as “surprisingly outstanding,” forecasting export growth
RSS