Google artificial intelligence creates its own AI ‘child’
Machine-made programme is more accurate than human-made systems
Google’s AutoML artificial intelligence (AI) system has created its own “fully-functional AI child” that’s capable of outperforming its human-made equivalents, reports Alphr.
The computer-made system, known as NASNet, is designed to identify objects, such as people and vehicles, in photographs and videos, the search engine giant says.
Studies show that NASNet is able to identify objects in an image with 82.7% accuracy. Google says this is an improvement of 1.2% over AI programmes created by humans.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The web giant has made the system “open source”, which means developers from outside the company can either expand upon the programme or develop their own version.
Researchers at Google say they hope AI developers will be able to build on these models to address “multitudes of computer vision problems we have not yet imagined.”
While the AI-made programme appears to be harmless in its current guise, Alphr says significant advances in its technology could have “dangerous implications.”
The website says AI systems could, for instance, develop their own “biases” and spread them onto other machines.
But the Daily Express says tech giants Facebook and Apple have joined the Partnership on AI to Benefit People and Society, a group that aims to implement strategies that “only allow AI to be developed if it will benefit humanity.”
The newspaper reports that Google’s engineering chief, Ray Kurzweil, also believes AI could cause problems for mankind in the future.
He says humanity will experience “difficult episodes” before AI can be used to benefit civilisation.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
Are 'judge shopping' rules a blow to Republicans?
Today's Big Question How the abortion pill case got to the Supreme Court
By Joel Mathis, The Week US Published
-
Climate change is driving Indian women to choose sterilization
under the radar Faced with losing their jobs, they are making a life-altering decision
By Theara Coleman, The Week US Published
-
'A great culture will be lost if the EV brigade gets its way'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
By Harold Maass, The Week US Published
-
How social media is limiting political content
The Explainer Critics say Meta's 'extraordinary move' to have less politics in users' feeds could be 'actively muzzling civic action'
By Chas Newkey-Burden, The Week UK Published
-
Justice Department bites Apple with iPhone suit
Speed Read The lawsuit alleges that the tech company monopolized the smartphone industry
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
The complex environmental toll of artificial intelligence
The explainer AI is very much mostly not green technology
By Devika Rao, The Week US Published
-
Artificial history
Opinion Google's AI tailored the past to fit modern mores, but only succeeded in erasing real historical crimes
By Theunis Bates Published
-
Apple kills its secret electric car project
Speed Read Many of the people from Project Titan are being reassigned to work on generative AI
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
AI is recreating the voices of mass shooting victims
The Explainer The parents of these victims are using the AI to try and lobby Congress for gun control
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published
-
The murky world of AI training
Under the Radar Despite public interest in artificial intelligence models themselves, few consider how those models are trained
By Austin Chen, The Week UK Published
-
Is Google's new AI bot 'woke'?
Talking Points Gemini produced images of female popes and Black Vikings. Now the company has stepped back.
By Joel Mathis, The Week US Published