Stanford Exec: AI Scientists' "Frontal Cortex Underdeveloped"

Associate director of Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Robert Reich threw absolute daggers this week when, while speaking to Esquire about the newness of the AI industry and how that impacts its relationship to ethics, he likened those in the burgeoning field to actual children, Maggie Harrison reported for Futurism.

Photo Insert: "AI researchers are more like late-stage teenagers," Reich told Esquire.

"AI researchers are more like late-stage teenagers," Reich told Esquire, comparing those in the still-very-much-developing field of AI to those in more established, similarly ethics-concerned biomedical tech.

"They're newly aware of their power in the world, but their frontal cortex is massively underdeveloped."

"Their [sense of] social responsibility," he added, "as a consequence is not so great."

The folks in Silicon Valley are quite literally attempting to design a separate — and possibly even superior — being in our own image, Harrison argued. Whether the goal is to build a version of a god in a machine or become a god to a machine will depend on the individual.

But as it should probably go without saying: the folks helming the AI race aren't actually teenagers, and for the most part, their frontal cortexes are developed. Conscious choices are being made, and they're being made by adults — how those choices work out for the rest of us, however, remains to be seen.

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