Metaphorical black boxes shield the inner workings of AIs, which protect software developers’ intellectual property. They also make it hard to understand how the AIs work – and why things go wrong.
Counterfactuals are claims about what would happen, were something to occur in a different way. For instance, we can ask what the world would be like had the internet never been developed.
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AI models are increasingly being used to make important decision about people’s lives – just take Robodebt. Yet the complexity of these systems means we hardly understand them.
Researchers have developed a black box for robots: an internal record of the robot’s inputs and actions. This will help investigate accidents and hopefully prevent future incidents.
Understanding how artificial intelligence algorithms solve problems like the Rubik’s Cube makes AI more useful.
Roland Frisch via Wikimedia Commons
AI algorithms can solve hard problems and learn incredible tasks, but they can’t explain how they do these things. If researchers can build explainable AI, it could lead to a flood of new knowledge.
Members of the International Red Crescent collect bodies of victims from Ukranian flight PS752.
ABEDIN TAHERKENAREH/EPA
Now the flight data recorders from Air Asia flight QZ8501 have been found investigators have a chance to find out what really brought down the aircraft with 162 passengers and crew on board. Divers have…
The evidence is out there, waiting to be found.
Igor Kovalenko
More than a month has passed since Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crashed with the loss of all 298 lives on board. But despite the disturbances at the crash site near the small town of Grabovo, near Donetsk…
A separatist soldier hands an MH17 black box to a Malaysian delegation.
EPA/Robert Ghement
The news that the black boxes from Malaysia Airlines flight M17 has been handed over to Malaysian authorities, will lead to many questions about what information they have to offer. The two recorders have…
Debris of the Boeing 777, Malaysia Arilines flight MH17, which crashed over the eastern Ukraine.
EPA
Normally, when a crashed aircraft’s black box is recovered, it can reveal exactly what happened to cause the disaster but in the case of MH17, the political instability between Ukraine and Russia could…
Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 as it takes off from Schiphol airport near Amsterdam, the Netherlands, at 12.31 PM July 17.
EPA/Fred Neeleman
The investigation into what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 and the location of the black box recorder comes down to a series of complex treaties and international law. Calls are being made by…
Inside an early version of the black box flight recorder.
DSTO
The search operation for missing flight MH370 continues to hear signals that could be from the plane’s black box recorders. It’s only when those recorders are recovered that investigators will be able…
The Black Box flight data recorders from the 2005 fatal aircraft accident near Lockhart River, Qld, arrive at the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, Canberra.
AAP/News Ltd/Ray Strange
As the search continues for wreckage from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane it’s probable that answers surrounding the mystery of flight MH370 will not be available until the recorders are recovered…
Australian Navy vessel Ocean Shield left Perth yesterday to join the search for missing flight MH370 and its black box flight recorders.
AAP/Tim Clarke
As the effort to find Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 moves inexorably towards the recovery stage, the challenge of finding the plane’s flight recorder (called the “black box” even though it’s actually…