Blog / Leadership & Transformation

Zigurat and SwissCognitive join efforts to boost AI

Zigurat, committed with the development of innovation and new technologies, bets for the Artificial Intelligence (AI). For this reason, Zigurat is in collaboration with SwissCognitive, one of the pioneer organizations in Europe in the field of Artificial Intelligence.SwissCognitive is THE global AI Hub and the leading partner in providing answers to all the questions which arise around AI. SwissCognitive takes on the role of the coordinator in the rapidly changing world of AI. SwissCognitive is the independent and open environment where all key players from technology, economy, politics and the society in general can debate. According to our core principle ‘share for success’ it provides the means to share knowledge and experiences and to consolidate and improve new scientific findings with a diverse audience. It is a hub to meet, exchange, connect, debate, and in the future maybe even decide.
  • Help to establish cognitive intelligence in companies to the extent that they become increasingly independent and more competitive.
  • To enable companies to become pioneers in the field of cognitive technologies.
  • To create moments to initialize and support specific projects in companies.
  • To reverse the trend to offshoring, in order to create tomorrow’s jobs.
Artificial intelligence today is properly known as narrow AI (or weak AI), in that it is designed to perform a narrow task. However, the long-term goal of many researchers is to create general AI (AGI or strong AI). While narrow AI may outperform humans at whatever its specific task is, like playing chess or solving equations, AGI would outperform humans at nearly every cognitive task. In the near term, the goal of keeping AI’s impact on society beneficial motivates research in many areas, from economics and law to technical topics such as verification, validity, security and control. In the long term, an important question is what will happen if the quest for strong AI succeeds and an AI system becomes better than humans at all cognitive tasks. Such a system could potentially undergo recursive self-improvement, triggering an intelligence explosion leaving human intellect far behind. By inventing revolutionary new technologies, such a superintelligence might help us eradicate war, disease, and poverty, and so the creation of strong AI might be the biggest event in human history. Some experts have expressed concern, though, that it might also be the last, unless we learn to align the goals of the AI with ours before it becomes super intelligent. There are some who question whether strong AI will ever be achieved, and others who insist that the creation of superintelligent AI is guaranteed to be beneficial. At FLI we recognize both of these possibilities, but also recognize the potential for an artificial intelligence system to intentionally or unintentionally cause great harm. We believe research today will help us better prepare for and prevent such potentially negative consequences in the future, thus enjoying the benefits of AI while avoiding pitfalls. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has taken the world by storm, and it is more than just the next hype. It will be one of the big steps of humanity. Therefore, the question is not ‘whether AI will change our world’ but rather “How are we dealing with these changes?”. The world needs a place where all questions relating to cognitive technologies can be discussed. Moreover, everyone – economy, politics, society – needs to be involved and included in the discussion.
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Zigurat Global Institute of Technology