Here’s What Inspired Top Minds in Artificial Intelligence to Get Into the Field

Artificial intelligence can seem pretty terrifying. On July 28, representatives from the Future of Life Institute presented a letter signed by Tesla Motors Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, and other luminaries of the science and technology world who are urging a ban on autonomous weapons. They expressed concern over a “military artificial intelligence arms race.” That sounds a lot like a plot line to a science-fiction movie, and the fact that we’re having a real conversation about it shows how far AI has come in a brief period of time.

Just a few years ago, artificial intelligence was a field starved for funding, rife with skepticism, and distinguished not by its achievements but by its perennial disappointments. Now machines have the capability to learn, build things, answer questions, and yes, even harm people. But creating the malevolent machine from 2001: A Space Odyssey was not why top scientists pursued a career in AI. (The Stanley Kubrick movie did, however, have an impact on at least a couple of prominent members of the AI community.) We spent the past few months asking some of the field’s most renowned researchers and entrepreneurs what inspired them to pour their intellectual life into something that once seemed so unlikely and ominous.