Artificial intelligence and robotics will transform the world. It will bring unimaginable changes to our economy, our politics, warfare, our emotional wellbeing, our environment, and how we educate and raise our children. Further, there is a very real fear that, in the not-so-distant future, a super-intelligent AI could replace humans in controlling the planet.

Despite the extraordinary importance of this issue and the speed at which it is progressing, AI is getting far too little discussion in Congress, the media and within the general population. That has got to change. Now.

Several months ago, as the ranking member of the US Senate committee on health, education, labor and pensions, I undertook an investigation regarding the monumental challenges that we face with the rapid development of artificial intelligence. Recently, I held a public discussion with Nobel prize winner Dr Geoffrey Hinton, considered to be the “Godfather” of AI, to get his views on a wide range of AI-related subjects.

Based on our investigation and other information that we are gathering, my staff and I will soon be presenting a very specific set of recommendations to Congress as to how we can begin addressing some of the unprecedented threats that AI poses.

Here are some of the outstanding questions that we intend to answer in our report:

Who should be in charge of the transformation into an AI world? Currently, a handful of the very wealthiest people on Earth – Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel and others – are investing many hundreds of billions of dollars in developing and implementing AI and robotics. Are we comfortable with seeing these enormously powerful men shape the future of humanity without any democratic input or oversight? Is the goal of the AI revolution simply to make the very rich even richer and more powerful, or will this revolutionary technology be........

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