Studying The Risk Of Robots - Forbes

Cambridge, England. A bucolic university town framed by grand cathedral spires with an angelic boy's choir, the river Cam meanders through the verdant pastures and perfectly manicured lawns and park. Boys with straw boaters, girls with floaty dresses peddle their no-speed bicycles with books teetering from the baskets.

It's all about students and a place of learning. But tucked away in this peaceful town is the University of Cambridge's Center for the Study for Existential Risk (CESR).

And what the CESR is concerned with is the rapid developments in human technology that they believe might pose, extinction-level risks to our species – meaning us humans.

The Cambridge project is looking at the threats that could emerge from progress in Artificial Intelligence (AI), developments in biotech and artificial life including nanotechnology. For the case of AI, Huw Price and Jaan Tallinn, founders of the project, referenced US Mathematician and sci-fi author Vernor Vinge in a recent article about whether there will ever be computers as smart as people, to which Vinge replied: "Yes, but only briefly".

He meant that once computers get to this level, there's nothing to prevent them getting a lot further very rapidly. Vinge christened this sudden explosion of intelligence the "technological singularity", and thought that it was unlikely to be good news, from a human point of view — The Conversation, August 6 ,2012

Vinge added that as robots and computers become smarter than humans, we could find ourselves at the mercy of "machines that are not malicious, but machines whose interests don't include us".

So, enter the Cambridge Project for Existential Risk, a joint initiative between a philosopher, a scientist and a software entrepreneur,  wants to create a multi-disciplinary research center dedicated to the study and mitigation of risks around the spread of robotic technology.

In the coming months CESR will develop it's first prospectus on what's headed our way. Instead of friend of foe or Saxon or Celt, maybe we will say, Cyborg or Human.