The Coming Identity Crisis for AI

Artificially intelligent behavior is emergent rather than designed, which is why we have little understanding of what it is capable of. Now computer scientists are saying this needs to change before AI's widespread deployment.

AI concept - 1178406460
(Credit: cono0430/Shutterstock)

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Artificially intelligent machines have become part of the firmament of technology in recent years. They are currently in the process of revolutionizing law, healthcare, education and numerous business models.

Indeed, AI has reached a watershed moment, according to Rishi Bommasani, Percy Liang and colleagues at Stanford University in the heart of Silicon Valley. “AI is undergoing a paradigm shift with the rise of models that are trained on broad data at scale and are adaptable to a wide range of downstream tasks,” they say. “We call these models foundation models.”

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