Writing 1 -- due Wednesday January 29

Please submit your writing as a pdf file. For all the writings in the class we will use Latex. Look at the Latex notes, for information on how to learn Latex.

There has been a lot of discussion recently in the news and on the web on the dangers of AI and what should be done to make AI ethical. This writing will ask you to understand some of the issues at stake and to present your own opinions.

Here is what you need to do:

1. Understand what some of the issues are. To do this, you can find sources of information yourself, or look at some of these links:
   • The Future of Life Institute http://futureoflife.org/ posts a collection on AI news. For instance, read How Can AI Systems Understand Human Values?
   • Stuart Russell, Daniel Dewey, and Max Tegmark Research Priorities for Robust and Beneficial Artificial Intelligence, AI Magazine 36:4 (2015).
   • The Responsible Machine Learning Principles from the Institute for Ethical AI & ML.
   • The World Economic Forum has a number of reports on AI and its impact. Read, for instance, Top 9 ethical issues in artificial intelligence.
2. Write a short essay (approximatively 500 words) addressing the following questions:
   • Do you believe there are reasons to be concerned about advances of AI? What specific advances are you concerned about? Why?
   • What steps you believe governments, industries, and academics should take to address these issues?
   In the writing you are free to express your own opinions, but you need to to provide some supporting evidence. Please make sure you cite the references you have read and used to support the points you want to make. I expect to see 3-5 references.

Grading criteria: 30% for the soundness of the arguments you make; 20% for the support you use for the arguments you make; 20% for using latex for your essay; 30% for the writing (spelling, grammar, clarity of expression, structure).