Passage II : 60. Reefs, for example, afford coastal protection from big waves, storms, and floods; they also act as key spawning and nursery grounds for economically important fish and other aquatic species.
Passage II : 61. This study concentrates on the climate challenge to corals, but many reefs are also experiencing other stresses, including pollution, overfishing and habitat destruction.
Passage III : 62. Physicist Stephen Hawking recently warned of the dangers of artificial intelligence and “powerful autonomous weapons.”
Passage III : 63. Autonomous technology is racing forward, but international discussions on managing the potential risks are already underway.
Passage III : 64. Recent advances in machine intelligence are enabling more advanced weapons that could hunt for targets on their own.
Passage III : 65. For the past several years, a consortium of nongovernmental organizations have called for ban on lethal autonomous weapons before they can be built.
Passage III : 66. One of their concerns has been that robotic weapons could result in greater civilian casualties.
Passage III : 67. However, opponents of a ban have countered that autonomous weapons might be able to more precisely target the enemy and avoid civilians better than humans can, just as self-driving cars might someday make roads safer.
Passage III : 68. Machine image classifiers, using neural networks, have been able to beat humans at some benchmark image recognition tests.
Passage III : 70. These advantages suggest that machines might be able to outperform humans in some situations in war.
