LinkedIn’s and eBay’s founders to fight against dangers of artificial intelligence

Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, and the Omidyar Network, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s nonprofit, have each allocated $10 million to fund academic research and development, aimed at keeping artificial intelligence systems ethical and preventing them from harming society.

Recode reports, that the fund received additional $5 million from the Knight Foundation and two other $1 million donations from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and Jim Pallotta, founder of the Raptor Group. The $27 million reserve is being anchored by MIT’s Media Lab and Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.

Despite AI’s obvious benefits, a lot of very smart people, for example, from White House, as well as Elon Musk, have warned about the possible dangers of artificially intelligent systems.  

AI systems work by analyzing massive amounts of data, which is first profiled and categorized by humans, with all their prejudices and biases in tow.

The money will be invested in research to investigate how socially responsible artificially intelligent systems can be designed to enable making decisions in fields like education, transportation and criminal justice accountable and fair.