Machine learning algorithms allow computers to learn without being explicitly programmed. Their application is now spreading to highly sophisticated tasks across multiple domains, such as medical diagnostics or fully autonomous vehicles. While this development holds great potential, it also raises new safety concerns, as machine learning has many specificities that make its behaviour prediction and assessment very different from that for explicitly programmed software systems. This book addresses the main safety concerns with regard to machine learning, including its susceptibility to...

This open access book provides a comprehensive overview of the state of the art in research and applications of Foundation Models and is intended for readers familiar with basic Natural Language Processing (NLP) concepts.Over the recent years, a revolutionary new paradigm has been developed for training models for NLP. These models are first pre-trained on large collections of text documents to acquire general syntactic knowledge and semantic information. Then, they are fine-tuned for specific tasks, which they can often solve with superhuman accuracy. When the models are large enough, they...

This open access book provides a comprehensive overview of the state of the art in research and applications of Foundation Models and is intended for readers familiar with basic Natural Language Processing (NLP) concepts.Over the recent years, a revolutionary new paradigm has been developed for training models for NLP. These models are first pre-trained on large collections of text documents to acquire general syntactic knowledge and semantic information. Then, they are fine-tuned for specific tasks, which they can often solve with superhuman accuracy. When the models are large enough, they...

This book introduces readers to critical ethical concerns in the development and use of artificial intelligence. Offering clear and accessible information on central concepts and debates in AI ethics, it explores how related problems are now forcing us to address fundamental, age-old questions about human life, value, and meaning. In addition, the book shows how foundational and theoretical issues relate to concrete controversies, with an emphasis on understanding how ethical questions play out in practice.All topics are explored in depth, with clear explanations of relevant debates in ethics...