KEY ISSUES: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

As neuroscience improves upon the understanding of the brain, and nanotechnology and information technology developments boost the ability to map brain functions and increase the capabilities of computers, the once only sci-fi notions of creating intelligent computers and developing of sophisticated human-machine linkages inch closer to reality. Essentially, researchers' increasing knowledge of the underlying functions of cognitive thought is informing efforts to mimic those processes using complex computer systems that utilize mathematical models and novel programming language.

Public Funding and Policy
While not all scientists agree that true artificial intelligence (AI) is possible, many concur that the possibility vastly increases with the convergence of today's emerging technologies. This has also caught the attention of some policymakers, who included within the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act a provision for considering the "ethical, legal, ... and other appropriate societal concerns, including the potential use of nanotechnology in enhancing human intelligence and in developing artificial intelligence which exceeds human capacity, are considered during the development of nanotechnology."¹

Furthermore, significant public funding flows into AI research and development. Specifically, the National Science Foundation-funded program, entitled Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science (AICS), has provided $5.5 million annually, since 2003, for research on a variety of AI topics, including "integrated architectures for cognition, knowledge discovery and acquisition, modeling of human learning and knowledge acquisition in complex domains, and automated reasoning: deductive, probabilistic, diagnostic, causal and analogical inference." Other agencies, including the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA),² NASA, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), are also funding projects in these areas.

While these still-futuristic developments are, as of yet, the stuff of fiction, and may never come to fruition, AI's vast potential and potentially greater implications are reason enough for significant forethought on the part of policy makers, scientists, and the general public. The possible advent of thinking machines and the manipulation of cognitive processes give rise to a unique set of ethical, legal, and social questions, the totality of which cannot be fully anticipated. Nevertheless, ongoing public dialogue is necessary to identify as many issues as possible and to work through those that can be foreseen.

¹ 15 U.S.C. § 7510.
² A recent funding contract awarded by DARPA to BBN Technologies in July 2006 includes $5.5 million annually for up to four years. The contract calls for development of the first phase of an Integrated Learning Program integral in the creation of "thinking" machines. See http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/BBN_Technologies_Awarded_DARPA_Artificial_Intelligence_Technology _Contract_999.html