DeepMind and Google signed an agreement drawn up by lawyers in London called the “Ethics and Safety Review Agreement” in the year leading up to the acquisition, according to the report.
This agreement states that if DeepMind ever succeeds in its core mission of building artificial general intelligence (AGI) — sometimes described as a machine that can successfully complete any intellectual task that a human can, and widely thought of as the holy grail in AI — then the control of that machine will lie with those on a governing panel known as the Ethics Board, according to the report.
The Ethics Board essentially allows DeepMind to legally maintain a degree of control over the technology it creates, no matter how valuable or dangerous it becomes, according to the report.
One thing worth noting is a machine with AGI might not choose to listen to those that “control” it.
Despite repeated requests, DeepMind has never revealed who is on the Ethics Board, but The Economist reports that all three DeepMind founders (Demis Hassabis, Mustafa Suleyman, and Shane Legg) are all on it.
So far, AI systems are only capable of beating humans at certain games and performing other niche tasks in specific fields, but they’re advancing quickly, with new breakthroughs being announced by major tech firms on a weekly basis.
originally posted on Forbes.com by Sam Shead
