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1 – 10 of 57Karan Narain, Agam Swami, Anoop Srivastava and Sanjeev Swami
The purpose of this paper is to address both the evolutionary and control aspects associated with the management of artificial superintelligence. Through empirical analysis, the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to address both the evolutionary and control aspects associated with the management of artificial superintelligence. Through empirical analysis, the authors examine the diffusion pattern of those high technologies that can be considered as forerunners to the adoption of artificial superintelligence (ASI).
Design/methodology/approach
The evolutionary perspective is divided into three parts, based on major developments in this area, namely, robotics, automation and artificial intelligence (AI). The authors then provide several dynamic models of the possible future evolution of superintelligence. These include diffusion modeling, predator–prey models and hostility models. The problem of control in superintelligence is reviewed next, where the authors discuss Asimov’s Laws and IEEE initiative. The authors also provide an empirical analysis of the application of diffusion modeling to three technologies from the industries of manufacturing, communication and energy, which can be considered as potential precursors to the evolution of the field of ASI. The authors conclude with a case study illustrating emerging solutions in the form of long-term social experiments to address the problem of control in superintelligence.
Findings
The results from the empirical analysis of the manufacturing, communication and energy sectors suggest that the technology diffusion model fits well with the data of robotics, telecom and solar installations till date. The results suggest a gradual diffusion process, like any other high technology. Thus, there appears to be no threat of “existential catastrophe” (Bostrom, 2014). The case study indicates that any future threat can be pre-empted by some long-term social measures.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the emerging stream of artificial superintelligence. As humanity comes closer to grappling with the important question of the management and control of this technology for the future, it is important that modeling efforts be made to understand the extant perspective of the development of the high-technology diffusion. Presently, there are relatively few such efforts available in the literature.
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The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework that highlights transhumanism’s ideals of achieving superintelligence, super longevity and super well-being through…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework that highlights transhumanism’s ideals of achieving superintelligence, super longevity and super well-being through human enhancement technologies (HET) and their relations with services marketing principles.
Design/methodology/approach
Framed by the transformative service research (TSR), this conceptual work articulates the 7Ps of the marketing mix with four macro-factors that create tensions at both the marketplace and consumer levels.
Findings
HET has potential for doing good but also tremendous bad; greater attention is needed from services marketing researchers especially in one proprietary research area: bioethics.
Research limitations/implications
The authors contribute to the growing work on TSR investigating how the interplay between service providers and consumers affects the well-being of both. Additionally, the authors call for novel interdisciplinary work in transhuman services research.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first papers in services marketing research to explore the promises and perils of transhumanism ideals and human enhancement technologies.
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This paper provides a detailed survey of the greatest dangers facing humanity this century. It argues that there are three broad classes of risks – the “Great Challenges” – that…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper provides a detailed survey of the greatest dangers facing humanity this century. It argues that there are three broad classes of risks – the “Great Challenges” – that deserve our immediate attention, namely, environmental degradation, which includes climate change and global biodiversity loss; the distribution of unprecedented destructive capabilities across society by dual-use emerging technologies; and value-misaligned algorithms that exceed human-level intelligence in every cognitive domain. After examining each of these challenges, the paper then outlines a handful of additional issues that are relevant to understanding our existential predicament and could complicate attempts to overcome the Great Challenges. The central aim of this paper is to constitute an authoritative resource, insofar as this is possible in a scholarly journal, for scholars who are working on or interested in existential risks. In the author’s view, this is precisely the sort of big-picture analysis that humanity needs more of, if we wish to navigate the obstacle course of existential dangers before us.
Design/methodology/approach
Comprehensive literature survey that culminates in a novel theoretical framework for thinking about global-scale risks.
Findings
If humanity wishes to survive and prosper in the coming centuries, then we must overcome three Great Challenges, each of which is sufficient to cause a significant loss of expected value in the future.
Originality/value
The Great Challenges framework offers a novel scheme that highlights the most pressing global-scale risks to human survival and prosperity. The author argues that the “big-picture” approach of this paper exemplifies the sort of scholarship that humanity needs more of to properly understand the various existential hazards that are unique to the twenty-first century.
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This paper aims to contribute to the futurology of a possible artificial intelligence (AI) breakthrough, by reexamining the Omohundro–Bostrom theory for instrumental vs final AI…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to contribute to the futurology of a possible artificial intelligence (AI) breakthrough, by reexamining the Omohundro–Bostrom theory for instrumental vs final AI goals. Does that theory, along with its predictions for what a superintelligent AI would be motivated to do, hold water?
Design/methodology/approach
The standard tools of systematic reasoning and analytic philosophy are used to probe possible weaknesses of Omohundro–Bostrom theory from four different directions: self-referential contradictions, Tegmark’s physics challenge, moral realism and the messy case of human motivations.
Findings
The two cornerstones of Omohundro–Bostrom theory – the orthogonality thesis and the instrumental convergence thesis – are both open to various criticisms that question their validity and scope. These criticisms are however far from conclusive: while they do suggest that a reasonable amount of caution and epistemic humility is attached to predictions derived from the theory, further work will be needed to clarify its scope and to put it on more rigorous foundations.
Originality/value
The practical value of being able to predict AI goals and motivations under various circumstances cannot be overstated: the future of humanity may depend on it. Currently, the only framework available for making such predictions is Omohundro–Bostrom theory, and the value of the present paper is to demonstrate its tentative nature and the need for further scrutiny.
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Khaldoon Al-Htaybat, Khaled Hutaibat and Larissa von Alberti-Alhtaybat
The purpose of this paper is to explore the intersection of accounting practices and new technologies in the age of agility as a form of intellectual capital, through sharing the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the intersection of accounting practices and new technologies in the age of agility as a form of intellectual capital, through sharing the conceptualization and real implications of accounting and accountability ideas in exploring and deploying new technologies, such as big data analytics, blockchain and augmented accounting practices and expounding how they constitute new forms of intellectual capital to support value creation and realise Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Design/methodology/approach
The adopted methodology is cyber-ethnography, which investigates online practices through observation and discourse analysis, reflecting on new business models and practices, and how accounting relates to these developments. The global brain sets the conceptual context, which reflects the distributed network intelligence that is created through the internet.
Findings
The main findings focus on various developments of accounting practice that reflect, utilise or support digital companies and new technologies, including augmentation, big data analytics and blockchain technology, as new forms of intellectual capital, that is knowledge and skills within organisations, that have the potential to support value creation and realise SDGs. These relate to and originate from the global brain, which constitutes the umbrella of tech-related intellectual capital.
Originality/value
This paper determines new developments in accounting practices in relation to new technologies, due to the continuous expansion and influence of the intelligence of the collective network, the global brain, as forms of intellectual capital, contributing to value creation, sustainable development and the realisation of SDGs.
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Karim Jebari and Joakim Lundborg
The claim that super intelligent machines constitute a major existential risk was recently defended in Nick Bostrom’s book Superintelligence and forms the basis of the…
Abstract
Purpose
The claim that super intelligent machines constitute a major existential risk was recently defended in Nick Bostrom’s book Superintelligence and forms the basis of the sub-discipline AI risk. The purpose of this paper is to critically assess the philosophical assumptions that are of importance to the argument that AI could pose an existential risk and if so, the character of that risk.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper distinguishes between “intelligence” or the cognitive capacity of an individual and “techne”, a more general ability to solve problems using, for example, technological artifacts. While human intelligence has not changed much over historical time, human techne has improved considerably. Moreover, the fact that human techne has more variance across individuals than human intelligence suggests that if machine techne were to surpass human techne, the transition is likely going to be prolonged rather than explosive.
Findings
Some constraints for the intelligence explosion scenario are presented that imply that AI could be controlled by human organizations.
Originality/value
If true, this argument suggests that efforts should focus on devising strategies to control AI rather strategies that assume that such control is impossible.
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This paper aims to focus on the trends and projection for future use of artificial intelligence (AI) in libraries. AI technologies is the latest among the technologies being used…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to focus on the trends and projection for future use of artificial intelligence (AI) in libraries. AI technologies is the latest among the technologies being used in libraries. The technology has systems that have natural language processing, machine learning and pattern recognition capabilities that make service provision easier for libraries.
Design/methodology/approach
Systematic literature review is done, exploring blogs and wikis, to collect information on the ways in which AI is used and can be futuristically used in libraries.
Findings
This paper found that uses of AI in libraries entailed enhanced services such as content indexing, document matching, content mapping content summarization and many others. AI possibilities were also found to include improving the technology of gripping, localizing and human–robot interaction and also having artificial superintelligence, the hypothetical AI that surpasses human intelligence and abilities.
Originality/value
It is concluded that advanced technologies that AI are, will help librarians to open up new horizons and solve challenges that crop up in library service delivery.
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The purpose of this paper is to explain to readers how intelligent systems can fail and how artificial intelligence (AI) safety is different from cybersecurity. The goal of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explain to readers how intelligent systems can fail and how artificial intelligence (AI) safety is different from cybersecurity. The goal of cybersecurity is to reduce the number of successful attacks on the system; the goal of AI Safety is to make sure zero attacks succeed in bypassing the safety mechanisms. Unfortunately, such a level of performance is unachievable. Every security system will eventually fail; there is no such thing as a 100 per cent secure system.
Design/methodology/approach
AI Safety can be improved based on ideas developed by cybersecurity experts. For narrow AI Safety, failures are at the same, moderate level of criticality as in cybersecurity; however, for general AI, failures have a fundamentally different impact. A single failure of a superintelligent system may cause a catastrophic event without a chance for recovery.
Findings
In this paper, the authors present and analyze reported failures of artificially intelligent systems and extrapolate our analysis to future AIs. The authors suggest that both the frequency and the seriousness of future AI failures will steadily increase.
Originality/value
This is a first attempt to assemble a public data set of AI failures and is extremely valuable to AI Safety researchers.
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The purpose of this paper is to identify and explore potential applications of cyborgian technologies within service contexts and how service providers may leverage the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to identify and explore potential applications of cyborgian technologies within service contexts and how service providers may leverage the integration of cyborgian service actors into their service proposition. In doing so, the paper proposes a new category of “melded” frontline employees (FLEs), where advanced technologies become embodied within human actors. The paper presents potential opportunities and challenges that may arise through cyborg technological advancements and proposes a future research agenda related to these.
Design/methodology/approach
This study draws on literature in the fields of services management, artificial intelligence, robotics, intelligence augmentation (IA) and human intelligence to conceptualise potential cyborgian applications.
Findings
The paper examines how cyborg bio- and psychophysical characteristics may significantly differentiate the nature of service interactions from traditional “unenhanced” service interactions. In doing so, the authors propose “melding” as a conceptual category of technological impact on FLEs. This category reflects the embodiment of emergent technologies not previously captured within existing literature on cyborgs. The authors examine how traditional roles of FLEs will be potentially impacted by the integration of emergent cyborg technologies, such as neural interfaces and implants, into service contexts before outlining future research directions related to these, specifically highlighting the range of ethical considerations.
Originality/value
Service interactions with cyborg FLEs represent a new context for examining the potential impact of cyborgs. This paper explores how technological advancements will alter the individual capacities of humans to enable such employees to intuitively and empathetically create solutions to complex service challenges. In doing so, the authors augment the extant literature on cyborgs, such as the body hacking movement. The paper also outlines a research agenda to address the potential consequences of cyborgian integration.
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Ahmad Arslan, Cary Cooper, Zaheer Khan, Ismail Golgeci and Imran Ali
This paper aims to specifically focus on the challenges that human resource management (HRM) leaders and departments in contemporary organisations face due to close interaction…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to specifically focus on the challenges that human resource management (HRM) leaders and departments in contemporary organisations face due to close interaction between artificial intelligence (AI) (primarily robots) and human workers especially at the team level. It further discusses important potential strategies, which can be useful to overcome these challenges based on a conceptual review of extant research.
Design/methodology/approach
The current paper undertakes a conceptual work where multiple streams of literature are integrated to present a rather holistic yet critical overview of the relationship between AI (particularly robots) and HRM in contemporary organisations.
Findings
We highlight that interaction and collaboration between human workers and robots is visible in a range of industries and organisational functions, where both are working as team members. This gives rise to unique challenges for HRM function in contemporary organisations where they need to address workers' fear of working with AI, especially in relation to future job loss and difficult dynamics associated with building trust between human workers and AI-enabled robots as team members. Along with these, human workers' task fulfilment expectations with their AI-enabled robot colleagues need to be carefully communicated and managed by HRM staff to maintain the collaborative spirit, as well as future performance evaluations of employees. The authors found that organisational support mechanisms such as facilitating environment, training opportunities and ensuring a viable technological competence level before organising human workers in teams with robots are important. Finally, we found that one of the toughest challenges for HRM relates to performance evaluation in teams where both humans and AI (including robots) work side by side. We referred to the lack of existing frameworks to guide HRM managers in this concern and stressed the possibility of taking insights from the computer gaming literature, where performance evaluation models have been developed to analyse humans and AI interactions while keeping the context and limitations of both in view.
Originality/value
Our paper is one of the few studies that go beyond a rather general or functional analysis of AI in the HRM context. It specifically focusses on the teamwork dimension, where human workers and AI-powered machines (robots) work together and offer insights and suggestions for such teams' smooth functioning.
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