Scientists Urge Trust in AI to Advance Mankind

With the public fears of artificial intelligence (AI) potentially holding it back in adoption, scientists are pushing AI as a path forward for discovery and innovation, potential uses that could increase public trust and reduce skepticism.

"What could be a better use of AI than curing diseases? To me, that seems like the number one most important thing anyone could apply AI to," DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis told a London scientific forum this week, Axios reported.

Hassabis and John Jumper won a Nobel Prize for developing AlphaFold, an AI system that aids drug discovery by predicting the structure of proteins.

Other trust-building uses of AI are forecasting floods and predicting wildfire boundaries, according to Hassabis and Google VP James Manyika, who added "a lot of those things, as useful as they are, people may not immediately think of them as AI."

AI use of the scientific method to innovate, advance, invent, and protect humanity can help reduce public skepticism and build confidence in the controversial computer-controlled technology.

"I think the scientific method is, arguably, maybe the greatest idea humans have ever had," Hassabis told the forum. "More than ever we need to anchor around the method in today's world, especially with something as powerful and potentially transformative as AI.

"I feel we should treat this more as a scientific endeavor, if possible, although it obviously has all the implications that breakthrough technologies normally have in terms of the speed of adoption and the speed of change."

AI is speeding up human knowledge, too.

"It's just dizzying," according to Scripps Research Translational Institute founder Eric Topol. "I've never seen anything like it in my life."

While it is "great to hear about all the excitement" of AI advancing science, Oxford University issued the usual caveat that "we're moving so fast, we've got to be careful."

• OpenAI Considers Taking on Google With Browser
• Musk Reignites Longstanding Feud With Bezos