I must admit that I am becoming preoccupied with Artificial Intelligence as of late. I absolutely loved the recent movie "The Imitation Game" in which Alan Turing invents one of the first electro mechanical computers to help win World War II. A was also amazed by "Interstellar" in which several computer AIs were portrayed as fairly key characters.

But Artificial Intelligence is more than a passing curiosity for me; it is a passion. As a co-inventor of a patent pending for an enabling technology for AIs, all things that talk about or portray AI jump out at me and I consider how our model can be adapted to or facilitate a given implementation or scenario.

However, one question that literally haunts me is the moral dilemma of whether a AI that passes the singularity (the point at which it can learn for itself), will be inherently good our bad for society and ultimately mankind. For you Sci-Fi enthusiasts out there you may recognize several movie themes based on this dilemma such as Terminator and Transcendence in which the world fundamentally changes based on an AI passing this point of singularity.

My dilemma has been recently ignited again by Stephen Hawking, an obviously brilliant person, stating that we should be very careful about our advances in AI; Hawking stated:

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.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-hawking-on-artificial-intell...

I much prefer the view of Google's in-house philosopher Damon Horowitz who believes that we can develop a "moral Operating System", upon which we could develop conscientiously intelligent machines.

I was also re-invigorated today by an article in Medium by Ken Goldberg who believes that we can achieve a harmony with machines to create better decisions and research by collaboration between people and AI in what he calls "Multiplicity" as opposed to singularity. For more on Goldberg's view, you can visit:

https://medium.com/davos-2015/lets-ditch-the-singularity-and-focus-...

I fully expect that the next 10 years will be yet another turning point in our world with an impact no less significant than the industrial age and the internet age as we begin to enter the age of artificial intelligence.

Here's hoping we aren't subjugated by our refrigerators anytime soon ;-)