Economic Times, India: Cognizant’s Senior Director, Center for the Future of Work, Discusses What to Do when Machines Go Wrong

“When it comes to intelligent robots, the world seems divided into two camps: avid enthusiasts and those who fear the coming of a dystopian future,” writes Manish Bahl. “Fortunately, the engineers, designers, developers, investors, and innovators creating these machines can fill that divide.” Excerpts:

“When intelligent, autonomous machines go wrong, it rattles us – particularly if the machine at fault was performing a very human-like physical task, such as driving a car or preparing food. As a result, we now face the moral dilemma of who should bear the responsibility for any wrongdoing or harmful conduct performed by a machine.

These same fears also surface when intelligent software delivers an unknown and invisible consequence. It’s frightening to feel helpless when handling issues we can’t even see, let alone control.

The potential failure of intelligent machines raises some important social, legal, technological, and ethical questions:

• When it comes to the actions taken by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system, how do we decide what is ethical and what is not, and who will decide what constitutes acceptable risks with machines? How will these risks be determined?
• If an intelligent system causes an accident or displays dangerous behaviors while working on various tasks, which rights should be considered when attempting to make accurate judgments about it?
• Should the governance of machines be fundamentally different from the governance of humans?

As intelligent machines increasingly become a part of our world, it’s up to us (and their makers), to establish a comfort level with these new beings and figure out how they fit into a world that is and will ultimately remain, dominated by humans.

At this point, machines aren’t perfect, but they will only get smarter, and unfortunately, there is no way of knowing what consequences might arise if or when the machines around us fail."

Click here to read more.