31 Quotes about machine learning and artificial intelligence by top world leaders

Machine learning and artificial intelligence have already stirred up excitement in the human society. As usual, there are the supporters of this technology and the critics as well. You might be wondering what views do top world leaders hold on ML and AI. After all, it may help you decide which side you should pick! Here is a list of thirty-one quotes by top world leaders on machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Let’s get started.

1. “Some people call this artificial intelligence, but the reality is this technology will enhance us. So, instead of artificial intelligence, I think we’ll augment our intelligence.”
-Ginni Rometty (CEO & President, IBM)

2. “Artificial intelligence is growing up fast, as are robots whose facial expressions can elicit empathy and make your mirror neurons quiver.”
-Diane Ackerman (American poet, essayist, and naturalist)

3. “Artificial intelligence will be the ultimate version of Google. The ultimate search engine that would understand everything on the web. It would understand exactly what you wanted, and it would give you the right thing. We’re nowhere near doing that now. However, we can get incrementally closer to that, and that is basically what we work on.”
-Larry Page (Co-founder and CEO, Alphabet Inc. ‘Google’)

4. “Artificial intelligence will reach human levels by around 2029. Follow that out further to, say, 2045, and we will have multiplied the intelligence, the human biological machine intelligence of our civilization a billion-fold.”
-Raymond ‘Ray’ Kurzweil (American author, scientist, inventor, and futurist)

5. “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race…It would take-off on its own and redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete and would be superseded.”
-Stephen Hawking (British theoretical physicist, author, cosmologist, Director of research, University of Cambridge)

6. “Some people worry that artificial intelligence will make us feel inferior, but then, anybody in his right mind should have an inferiority complex every time he looks at a flower.”
-Alan Kay (American computer scientist, President of Viewpoints research institute)

7. “I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans, and I am rooting for the machines.”
-Claude Elwood Shannon (American mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer, 1916-2001)

8. “The sad thing about artificial intelligence is that it lacks artifice and therefore intelligence.”
-Jean Baudrillard (French philosopher, cultural theorist and political commentator, 1929-2007)

9. “Another Kilgore Trout book there in the window was about a man who built a time machine so he could go back and see Jesus. It worked, and he saw Jesus when Jesus was only twelve years old. Jesus was learning the carpentry trade from his father. Two Roman soldiers came into the shop with a mechanical drawing on papyrus of a device, which they wanted to be built by the sunrise next morning. It [the device] was a cross to be used in the execution of a rabble-rouser. Jesus and his father build it. They were glad to have the work. And the rabble-rouser was executed on it. So it goes.”
-Kurt Vonnegut (American writer, 1922-2007)

10. “The key to artificial intelligence has always been the representation.”
-Jeff Hawkins (American inventor, founder of Palm computing and handspring)

11. “I don’t want to really scare you, but it was alarming how many people I talked to who are highly placed people in AI who have retreats that are sort of ‘bug-out’ houses, to which they could flee if it all hits the fan.”
-James Barrat (American documentary filmmaker and author of ‘Our final invention: Artificial intelligence and the end of the Human era’)

12. “We must address, individually and collectively, moral and ethical issues raised by cutting-edge research in artificial intelligence and biotechnology, which will enable significant life extension, designer babies, and memory extraction.”
-Klaus Schwab (German engineer, economist, founder & chairman of World economic forum)

13. “You have to talk about ‘The Terminator’ if you’re talking about artificial intelligence. I actually think that that’s way off. I don’t think that an artificially intelligent system that has superhuman intelligence will be violent. I don’t think that it will disrupt our culture.”
-Gray Scott (Futurist and techno-philosopher)

14. “Every major player is working on this technology of artificial intelligence. As of now, it’s benign…But I would say that the day is not far off when artificial intelligence, when applied to cyber warfare, becomes a threat to everybody.”
-Ted Bell (American author)

15. “Anything that could give rise to smarter-than-human-intelligence- in the form of artificial intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, or neuroscience-based human-intelligence enhancement wins hands down beyond contest as doing the most to change the world. Nothing else is even in the same league.”
-Eliezer Yudkowsky (American AI researcher and writer)

16. “I’m increasingly inclined to think that there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish. I mean with the artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon.”
-Elon Musk (South African inventor, investor, CEO & CTO of SpaceX, CEO of Tesla Inc.)

17. “Forget artificial intelligence in the brave new world of big data, it’s the artificial idiocy we should be looking out for.”
-Tom Chatfield (British author, broadcaster and tech-philosopher)

18. “There are lots of examples of routine, middle-skilled jobs that involve relatively structured tasks, and those are the jobs that are being eliminated the fastest. Those kinds of jobs are easier for our friends in the artificial intelligence community to design robots to handle them. They could be software robots, or they could be physical robots.”
-Erik Brynjolfsson (American academic, Professor at MIT Sloan school of management, Director of MIT initiative on the digital economy)

19. “It seems probable that once the machine thinking method had started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers. They would be able to converse with each other to sharpen their wits. At some stage, therefore, we should have to expect the machines to take control.”
-Alan Turing (English computer scientist, mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and philosopher, 1912-1954)

20. “If you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you’d be better off.”
-Sergey Brin (Russian-American computer scientist, Co-founder, and president of Alphabet Inc. ‘Google’)

21. “I absolutely don’t think a sentient artificial intelligence is going to wage war against the human species.”
-Daniel H. Wilson (Robotics engineer, TV host and NY Times bestselling author)

22. “Why give a robot an order to obey orders-why aren’t the original orders enough? Why command a robot not to do harm-Wouldn’t it be easier never to command it to harm in the first place? Does the universe contain a mysterious force of pulling entities towards malevolence, so that a positronic brain must be programmed to withstand it? Do intelligent beings inevitably develop an attitude problem? Now that the computers really have become smarter and more powerful, the anxiety has waned…”
-Steven Pinker (Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author)

23. “All the things that made us basically nasty, rapacious, competitive as a species are not necessarily hard-coded into whatever passes for the DNA of artificial intelligence.”
-Robert J. Sawyer (Canadian science fiction writer)

24. “One can imagine such technology outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand. Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all.”
-Stephen Hawking (British theoretical physicist, author, cosmologist, Director of research, University of Cambridge)

25. “Pattern recognition and association make up the core of our thought. These activities involve millions of operations carried out in parallel, outside the field of our consciousness. If AI appeared to hit a brick wall after a few quick victories, it did so owing to its inability to emulate these processes.”
-Daniel Crevier (Canadian AI and image processing researcher, entrepreneur)

26. “Once computers can effectively reprogram themselves, leading to a so-called “technological singularity” or “intelligence explosion,” the risks of machines outwitting humans in battles of resources and self-preservation cannot simply be dismissed.”
-Gary Marcus (Cognitive science professor and research psychologist, NYU)

27. “It is going to be interesting to see how the society deals with artificial intelligence, but it will definitely be cool.”
-Colin Angle (Co-founder and CEO, iRobot corporation)

28. “The upheavals [of artificial intelligence] can escalate quickly and become scarier and even cataclysmic. Imagine how a medical robot, originally programmed to get rid of the cancer, could conclude that the best way to obliterate cancer is to exterminate humans who are genetically prone to the disease.”
-Nick Bilton (British-American journalist and author)

29. “Nobody phrases it this way, but I think that artificial intelligence is almost a humanities discipline. It really is an attempt to understand human intelligence and human cognition.”
-Sebastian Thrun (German innovator, entrepreneur and computer scientist)

30. “We cannot blithely assume that a superintelligence will necessarily share any of the final values stereotypically associated with wisdom and intellectual developments in humans-scientific curiosity, benevolent concern for others, spiritual enlightenment and contemplation, renunciation of material acquisitiveness, a taste for refined culture or for the simple pleasures in life, humility and selflessness, and so forth.”
-Nick Bostrom (Swedish philosopher)

31. “Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russians but all of the humankind. It comes with colossal opportunities, but also threats that are difficult to predict. Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the leader of the world.”
-Vladimir Putin (President of Russia)

You just went through the opinions of some top world leaders on ML and AI. What do you think about this technology? Which side will you pick? Let us know in the comment box below.