Do you think that the public would agree with the research you are doing?

Question: Do you think that the public would agree with the research you are doing?
- Keywords:
  public
Asked by Isobel And Maddie - QUEEN to Peter, Lucy, Jack, Huma on 8 Nov 2016.
- Huma Shah answered on 8 Nov 2016:
  
  Hello Isobel R.
  
  Really good question. The research needs to be explained and justified fully so that the public understands why it is being done and why the public’s tax money is being spent on the research.
  
  I have involved members of the public in my experiments – I was the first to involve school pupils in Turing test experiments, at Reading University in 2008:
  https://www.reading.ac.uk/15/research/ResearchReviewonline/featuresnews/res-featureloebner.aspx
  
  Through public participation children, teenagers and adults can see what the research is and why it is being done. I hope the public agree that natural language and artificial intelligence are worthy areas to study – they can see some benefits, for example in my Turing tests they might get better at deception-detection and avoid being scammed by bogus bots across the Internet. More widely, the public might learn to appreciate that artificial intelligence could improve human life through smarter machines doing the mundane and dangerous jobs. The public might also agree they should have a say in how and where artificial intelligences will be used so that there are jobs left for humans in the future.
  
  Do you agree with my research?
  
  Huma
- Peter Boorman answered on 18 Nov 2016:
  
  Hi Isobel and Maddie,
  
  I’m not sure if the whole public would agree with what I’m doing, but this is why it is *so* important for government etc., to vote on how much funds particular science organisations get, in order to determine where the tax payers money should be going.
  
  Peter

Question: Do you think that the public would agree with the research you are doing?

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