Anti-Robot Protest Held At SXSW

A small group of protesters held signs and handed out t-shirts to protest robots today at South by
Southwest in Austin, Texas.

What did they have against robots you might ask? Well, they are (apparently, seriously) concerned that robots could one day surpass human intelligence and they were genuinely anxious about this.

A spokesperson for the group told TechCrunch they hoped to raise awareness about the possible dangers of uncontrolled growth and development around artificial intelligence and robotics.

He stressed, however the group wasn’t against technology per se or even robots and AI, but they wanted to make sure that these technologies were developed in a controlled way.

The protest spokesperson cited Elon Musk as a prominent person who has expressed concern about robots and the development of artificial intelligence, and in fact TechCrunch reported in January about a $10M donation by Musk to the Future of Life Institute to “keep AI beneficial to humanity.”

As the article stated:

“Here are all these leading AI researchers saying that AI safety is important”, said Elon Musk in the statement, referring to this letter originally put forward by FLI founder and MIT professor Max Tegmark. “I agree with them, so I’m today committing $10M to support research aimed at keeping AI beneficial for humanity.”

FLI wrote in the blog post:

“There is now a broad consensus that AI research is progressing steadily, and that its impact on society is likely to increase. A long list of leading AI-researchers have signed an open letter calling for research aimed at ensuring that AI systems are robust and beneficial, doing what we want them to do.”

The group is simply organizing around the concerns expressed in this letter by some prominent members of the scientific community including physicist Stephen Hawking.

That said, the protest spokesperson insisted they didn’t intend to stop the progress of technology, but they hoped to encourage...
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