Robot warning: artificial intelligence could kill humans

The advancement of robotics to aid 21st century life has been remarkable in the last decade, however the concept of conversation has been a particular struggle for scientists. Now it has

even been suggested that teaching artificial intelligence the complexities of the human language can have “dangerous” consequences to life. Kiki Hempelmann, a computational linguist who

studies humour at Texas A&M University-Commerce, has claimed robots may even resort to “killing people because it thinks it is funny” if all goes wrong. Mr Hempelmann said: “Artificial

intelligence will never get jokes like humans do. “In themselves, they have no need for humour. They completely miss context. “Teaching AI systems humour is dangerous because they may find

it where it isn't and they may use it where it's inappropriate. “Maybe bad AI will start killing people because it thinks it is funny.” However Dr Tristan Miller, a computer

scientist and linguist at Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany, was more positive and insisted if this could be pulled off it would make AI more relatable. The boundaries of AI is

almost limitless and future technology could be advanced so robots could recognise sarcasm and even different languages. But Dr Miller acknowledges science is a long way off as robots do not

have “real world knowledge” in order to interact with jokes. Dr Miller said: “Creative language - and humour in particular - is one of the hardest areas for computational intelligence to

grasp. “It's because it relies so much on real-world knowledge - background knowledge and common sense knowledge. “A computer doesn't have these real-world experiences to draw on.

It only knows what you tell it and what it draws from.”