WGS 2018: Experts Urge Governments To Take A Leading Role In AI And Robotics For The Benefit Of Society

 The powerful potential of robotics in all aspects of life was under the spotlight in the sessions ‘Can We Govern AI’ and ‘Why Governments Need to Invest in Robotics and AI’ on day two of the sixth World Government Summit (WGS 2018) in Dubai.

Moderated by His Excellency Omar bin Sultan Al Olama, UAE Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, the ‘father of self-driving cars’ Sebastian Thrun attempted to answer the question: ‘Can we Govern AI?’.

In the other session, moderated by Futurism CEO Alexander Klokus, the panel discussion highlighted the need for governments to set long-term goals in relation to artificial intelligence (AI). The high-level panel included Dr Anima Anandkumar, Principal Scientist at Amazon AI; Carol Reiley, President of Drive.ai – a developer of AI software for autonomous vehicles, and Dr Jürgen Schmidhuber, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at NNAISENSE.

Examining the issue of control in session one, Dr Anandkumar said: “Governments must educate their citizens about what it is currently occurring in technology, and where it is heading. Policy makers must globalize and democratize artificial intelligence.”

Emphasizing the potential of harnessing AI for the good of mankind, she added: “We built human societies to limit creativity and to work, in a way, as machines. The use of artificial intelligence in the job market will allow humans to focus on their imagination.”