January 23, 2015

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Tech Consequences Voiced by Carnegie Mellon Prez

At the World Economic Forum, Carnegie Mellon president Subra Suresh talks about dealing with the unintended consequences of ever more sophisticated intelligent devices

 

By Mariette DiChristina & Steve Mirsky

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Subra Suresh: “With every invention and every technology we have a lot of intended benefits and intended consequences. Simultaneously, we have many unintended consequences.”

Steve Mirsky: Subra Suresh, an engineer by training, is president of Carnegie Mellon University and former director of the National Science Foundation. He spoke on January 23rd at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to Scientific American Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina.

MD: “I’ve also been hearing some critiques and concerns about what’s going to happen as machines grow more intelligent.”

SS: “As machines become more and more sophisticated, we have to be very careful about issues of privacy, confidentiality, intellectual property. If people from discipline and one part of the world go and mine proprietary information from another part of the world, either legally or illegally, what are the consequences of this? We’ve already seen leak of information because of breach of cybersecurity. And I think those kind of issues are going to be there. But in that sense, artificial intelligence and machine learning are no different from any other new wave of technology that has the potential to be used as well as abused.”

SM: For more from Subra Suresh, check our website, www.scientificamerican.com, for an upcoming edition of the Science Talk podcast.

—Steve Mirsky

[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
 

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Mariette DiChristina, Steering Group chair, is dean and professor of the practice in journalism at the Boston University College of Communication. She was formerly editor in chief of Scientific American and executive vice president, Magazines, for Springer Nature.

More by Mariette DiChristina

Steve Mirsky was the winner of a Twist contest in 1962, for which he received three crayons and three pieces of construction paper. It remains his most prestigious award.

More by Steve Mirsky

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Tech Consequences Voiced by Carnegie Mellon Prez