Sup guys, I'm a Junior IV software engineer at HP, my focus here is to automate tasks and replace human resources, starting 2011 HP started a new brand product called Smart Planning, this works with a HP software called Service Manager and the name speaks for itself, it manages your service, most clients like Chrysler and American Airlines use the Service Manager only as a ticketing tool (the requester calls a service desk and the Service Manager is used to store and escalate that ticket), but the company as a whole makes a lot more with Service Manager, we have a badge control system that allocates your productive data on your ID Badge, the ID Badge contains your full name, ID, E-mail, blood, organization, some HR info and your work hours, with the new Smart Planning system now we have a tool that manages this information and 'helps' us understanding/improving it.
How that works: First of all the Smart Planning platform is able to read all your data, it knows when you arrived the place, when you got out, how many hours you spend in your desk and such (bathrooms and common areas are 'not' stored because of legal concerns about it. Right now this system cannot be called AI by our standards because it learns only when data is imputed manually, it can read all your data, it knows where you are, but if you input a query like 'what is an apple?" on it the Smart Planning msys it wont be able to answer you properly.
BUT the Seniors managed to create a Mid-level algorithm that is able to research, not only with google, it researches employees inputs, reads pre-stored data and, wait for it... Big Data. In my honest opinion Big Data is the shortcut for any AI to become powerful and therefore smarter and potentially dangerous to humans because Big Data is the ability to learn from data that was naturally imputed, like that thermostat that 'learns' what temperature you like, when you go to bed etc, but Big Data goes a little beyond that, it learns every possible path needed to achieve a goal or answer, let's face an issue like a garden, basic programming is a path on that garden, advanced data research is asking people what path they take and then build a path, big data is not building a path at all, but watching every step and store that information to study the best path and it's needed features. The new Smart Planning system with Bid Data is nowhere near to be implemented, but A. LOT. of capable people were hired only for this task and the company is really looking forward to this with the new Cloud storing technology.
That being said I would like to contribute with my opinion on the subject:
I think both sides have their right points: AI is at this point not dangerous at all, actually the most efficient AI in use today is helping in healthcare (
http://www.openclinical.org/aiinmedicine.html) and other ones are being developed to help disabled people (but they're not as much advanced as the healthcare ones, at least from what I know). When comes to developing we learn that you always need to have an OFF switch if your system/bot/algorithm is set to be automatic, there are many ways to keep a system safe, in my city for example the power plant is managed by a system that detects power surges and replace (somehow) the energy needed by that place for a more stable (yet pricier) one for a few time, but sometimes in storms the ground itself can become ionized (or deionized) and the system needs to be shut-down to avoid uneeded replacements, the system already knows places with the most chances of a power surge and it keeps an extra eye on that places, but if something is done wrongly, two buttons and it's back on manual again.
On the other hand, not everyone builds everything following the exact standards, I have faced in my life automated systems with no OFF switch, algorithms with infinite scheduled tasks and no data confirmation. These are the dangerous pieces and they pretty much already exist, but yet not that smart.
The danger in AI is the person who built it.