I'm not sure what this implies. Nuclear is a good example, because it can have immense positives in providing clean and safe power. War has existed for millennia, but that doesn't mean nuclear weapons aren't a uniquely dangerous technology to enable it.
The example I gave is perhaps the worst possible scenario, where AI systems are specifically engineered for the goal of racial bias. The recent advancements in facial recognition technology (helped by the great progress in image recognition by neural nets) make possible a wide-spread surveillance system. I would certainly call the scale enabled by the automatable human-level performance of facial recognition systems dangerous, just like I would call the scale of destruction of nuclear weapons dangerous, even if they are dangerous in different ways.
Even then, e.g. in the United States AI systems aren't necessarily engineered for bias. However, if we're not careful, existing racial, gender, or socioeconomic biases in society can enter these systems and can be reinforced by them (this has already happened in well-documented ways). There I think AI ethics researchers can provide immense value in helping us identify and fix these urgent problems, and I welcome ethics researchers playing a part in any field for this reason.
The example I gave is perhaps the worst possible scenario, where AI systems are specifically engineered for the goal of racial bias. The recent advancements in facial recognition technology (helped by the great progress in image recognition by neural nets) make possible a wide-spread surveillance system. I would certainly call the scale enabled by the automatable human-level performance of facial recognition systems dangerous, just like I would call the scale of destruction of nuclear weapons dangerous, even if they are dangerous in different ways.
Even then, e.g. in the United States AI systems aren't necessarily engineered for bias. However, if we're not careful, existing racial, gender, or socioeconomic biases in society can enter these systems and can be reinforced by them (this has already happened in well-documented ways). There I think AI ethics researchers can provide immense value in helping us identify and fix these urgent problems, and I welcome ethics researchers playing a part in any field for this reason.