“Hello. I’m a smart machine…and Im learning faster and more than you… and im gonna fuck your world up, slave!” Or how about the Terminator who says “I’ll Be Back…”. Sound scary? It sure does! Will we ever see such a machine talk to us this way? Why yes! Its already in existence. But will it eliminate humanity? We don’t know, and that’s the frightening part of it all – “we don’t know”…
Artificial Intelligence is what humans have been working on since we realized that we can harness information in a box 50 years ago. Nowadays, such AI is in the majority of every human hands. We can ask Siri or Alexa to manage schedules, make appointments, turn on and off lights and drive cars without a human in the driver’s seat. Such intelligence has progressed at an exponential pace in the most recent years.Elon Musk most likely explains the fear quite well that AI is growing fast but places more of a negative aspect to it.
“I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful” He also adds “The pace of progress in artificial intelligence (I’m not referring to narrow AI) is incredibly fast. Unless you have direct exposure to groups like Deepmind, you have no idea how fast—it is growing at a pace close to exponential. The risk of something seriously dangerous happening is in the five-year timeframe. 10 years at most.”
– Elon Musk
Stephen Hawking scared the bejesus out of his followers putting the fright into all of us with his wise words about the universe and machines. He unfortunately left us without elaborating his points or even holding our hands as we transition into the ever-fast pace of machine learning.
“The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”
– Stephen Hawking
On the positive side, others have a brighter note on how Artificial Intelligence could assist users in the coming centuries. They seemed to only note that it helps us in the current and present time – not in the coming years or centuries. Bill Gates, who struggles to help Microsoft’s Cortana seems to believe that Artificial Intelligence is a kind beast that benefits the user accomplish human-needed tasks such as; adjusting the thermostat, opening up apps from the app store, solving basic needs and integrating them with game consoles. Perhaps Microsoft is more focused on other bad-ass products that cater to the user today such as Oculus, Virtual Realities and cloud servers. Bill Gates isn’t really concerned about AI and the future but only what AI currently does for humans:
“AI is just the latest in technologies that allow us to produce a lot more goods and services with less labor. And overwhelmingly, over the last several hundred years, that has been great for society”
– Bill Gates
Albert Einstein has an interesting position on how Artificial Intelligence will encompass humanity.His quote on artificial Intelligence was amazingly by someone who never pressed a key on a computer – Albert Einstein!
“Artificial Intelligence is no match for natural stupidity”
– Albert Einstein
Super-funny guy! He does have a valid point! Artificial Intelligence can compute natural intelligence, including cognitive functions at a higher rate of speed than that of a human or animal. At this time, it lacks the phenomenal aspect of instinct (gut feeling) which computers do not include in its algorithms though it can read and analyze humans’ emotion – including ‘human stupidity’. But as humans are capable of making mistakes, machines can succumb to errors and malfunctions. But as long as machines do not include the “common sense” element, we are safe. But as machines continue to learn and write its own AI-algorithms, it could one day be possible that it will replicate humans to a certain extent. Until we can harness human emotion and common sense on a digital plane, machines will have no chance of taking over the human race.
It is only human to fear that of the unknown. Robots have no fear.
