This is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science. I'm Steve Mursky.

Got a minute?

With every invention and every technology, we have a lot of intended benefits and intended consequences.

Simultaneously we have many unintended consequences.

Subra Soresh, an engineer by training, is president of Carnegie Mellon University and former director of the National Science Foundation.

He spoke on January 23rd at the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland to Scientific American Editor-in-Chief Mariette de Christina.

I've also been hearing some critiques and concerns about what's going to happen as machines grow

more intelligent.

As machines become more and more sophisticated, we have to be very careful about issues of privacy,

confidentiality, intellectual property.

If people from one discipline and one part of the world go and mine proprietary information

from another part of the world either legally or illegally what are the consequences of this?

We've already seen leak of information

because of breach of cyber security.

And I think those kinds of issues are going to be there.

But in that sense artificial intelligence and

machine learning are no different from any other new wave of technology that has the

potential to be used as well as abused. For more from Subra Soresh, check out our website

W.W. dot Scientific American.

For an upcoming edition of the Science Talk Podcast.

Thanks for the minute for Scientific Americans 60 Second Science, I'm Steve Mursky.