Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
“The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race,” the world-renowned physicist told the BBC. “It would take off on its own and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.”
- Stephen Hawking
Quote:
"I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I were to guess like what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like yeah he’s sure he can control the demon. Didn’t work out."
- Elon Musk
Quote:
“The competitive advantage—economic, military, even artistic—of every advance in automation is so compelling that passing laws, or having customs, that forbid such things merely assures that someone else will get them first."
- Vernor Vinge
Barrat’s core argument, which he borrows from the A.I. researcher Steve Omohundro, is that the drive for self-preservation and resource acquisition may be inherent in all goal-driven systems of a certain degree of intelligence. In Omohundro’s words, “if it is smart enough, a robot that is designed to play chess might also want to be build a spaceship,” in order to obtain more resources for whatever goals it might have. A purely rational artificial intelligence, Barrat writes, might expand “its idea of self-preservation … to include proactive attacks on future threats,” including, presumably, people who might be loathe to surrender their resources to the machine. Barrat worries that “without meticulous, countervailing instructions, a self-aware, self-improving, goal-seeking system will go to lengths we’d deem ridiculous to fulfill its goals,” even, perhaps, commandeering all the world’s energy in order to maximize whatever calculation it happened to be interested in.
It's not as outlandish and Hollywood-esque as it may seem at first. Think of how rapidly technology has developed since just 1990. Quarter of a century, and we have a vast internet / big data industry, miniaturized computer systems at our fingertips, drones, self-driving cars on the horizon, prototype laser weapons on US ships, the beginning of truly wearable technology... And that's just 25 years.
Many of us may perhaps be dead when we reach this point of AI, but it's quite possible that many of us won't be - and that your kids will live to see the day when a machine is able to self-guide its programming and augment its behavior at a very high level of sophistication and independence to reach goals. Google, Apple, IBM, DARPA are all working very hard at making this happen... Look at the past progress in 25 years and think out another 50-75 years. That's not that far away, folks.
Aside from the fact that most of our jobs will long be toast by then, we could face a much more direct existential threat when we reach the point where machine intelligence can rival our own. Once a machine is capable of forming and executing an independent agenda in furtherance of its goals, there is no reason to think that such an agenda has to be friendly to human values. The thought of how we put safeguards on something of this sort should start occupying some real estate in our national dialogue. This could be a lot riskier for humanity than nuclear weapons, and much harder to manage.
This could become the most important issue humanity has ever faced.
Theres a ton of possibilities as far as a AI future. Some good, some bad, and some very very strange ones. Its a technology that will be good or bad-just like every other technology. Nothing to get too worked up about yet.
I seriously doubt we have any terminators in our future.
“The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race,†the world-renowned physicist told the BBC. “It would take off on its own and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.â€
- Stephen Hawking.
Stephen Hawking says silly stuff to get people to pay attention to him.
Smartly...
We are actually pretty far away from true AI. Sure, we have computers that can crunch a bunch of numbers in microseconds, but we have yet to come up with computer that cannot be fooled by the sentence "Everything I say is a lie".
There is such a thing as machine learning, but that is a different discipline than Artificial Intelligence. It has to do with a machine's ability to recognize patterns and adjust to those patterns. There have been some impressive advances in machine learning, but still a huge step away from human intelligence in any meaningful sense. Even if true AI is achieved, it doesn't mean that it is self-aware nor does it mean it has any sense of self-preservation.
Also, we are not just going to stumble upon full-blown AI. There will be an ever increasing series of advancements that will create machines as smart as cockroach then as smart as a frog then as smart as a dog then as smart as chimp and then as smart as person. We will learn how to cope with these as the advancements are made. We are not going to go from modern supercomputers to HAL or Skynet the same way you're not going to from a Ford Model T to a flying car. There are going to be a lot of intermediate stages to deal with before it is a practical possibility.
There is such a thing as machine learning, but that is a different discipline than Artificial Intelligence. It has to do with a machine's ability to recognize patterns and adjust to those patterns. There have been some impressive advances in machine learning, but still a huge step away from human intelligence in any meaningful sense.
Understand it's not simply looking the answer up in database, they require reasoning and logic. That's Ken Jenning's it's competing against. If you are unfamilair with Jeopardy the winner gets to come back the next day, he was on the show for months.
Current thinking would have artificial intelligence well under the control of world leaders and only equaled by their artificial integrity.
" goal-seeking system will go to lengths we’d deem ridiculous to fulfill its goals,” even, perhaps, commandeering all the world’s energy."
That is why we invade countries now.
" This could become the most important issue humanity has ever faced."
It's better to be concerned with the Wizard behind the curtain than the Tin Man squeaking on the front porch.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
