The Dawn of Artificial Intelligence - The Economist (power, advance, bill gates)

[Woof]

I don't know if y'all can get right into this article, it might require a free sign-up that gets you 3 free articles per week.

“THE development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race,” Stephen Hawking warns. Elon Musk fears that the development of artificial intelligence, or AI, may be the biggest existential threat humanity faces. Bill Gates urges people to beware of it.

Dread that the abominations people create will become their masters, or their executioners, is hardly new. But voiced by a renowned cosmologist, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and the founder of Microsoft—hardly Luddites—and .............. Clever computers: The dawn of artificial intelligence | The Economist

[thecoalman]

I'm not concerned about robots taking over the world, what I do wonder about is how a capitalist society survives. The worker depends on the business for the job, the business depends on the worker having money in their pocket to buy their product. If the worker is eliminated the business cannot survive.

We are entering an era where the changes will be comparable to the industrial revolution. The difference now is the technology itself can fill the needs for just about any job. Interesting times are coming.

[Josseppie]

I like Stephen Hawking but he is wrong here. We will be able to keep up we will just have to merge with the tech ourselves and become transhuman.

[Woof]

Originally Posted by thecoalman

I'm not concerned about robots taking over the world, what I do wonder about is how a capitalist society survives. The worker depends on the business for the job, the business depends on the worker having money in their pocket to buy their product. If the worker is eliminated the business cannot survive.

We are entering an era where the changes will be comparable to the industrial revolution. The difference now is the technology itself can fill the needs for just about any job. Interesting times are coming.

Yes, that's one reason why I keep saying that reverting to pure capitalism is a very bad idea for the human race. There aren't enough jobs for everyone now (even though there were when I was very young), and there are going to be fewer over the coming decades ..... the economy will have to shift to fewer hours, more unemployment benefits, more govt jobs, easier disability standards, and maybe a base small income for everyone regardless of circumstances or work ...... I forget what that's called, but it was up for referendum vote in Switzerland a year or so ago.

[metroxian]

We've had artificial intelligence in Congress for decades.

[jambo101]

Seeing where technology has come just in the last 50 years gives pause for concern as to where it will lead in the next hundred years.Giving technology artificial intelligence could be the key to our ultimate demise as what we are doing is creating a new sentient life form..

[thecoalman]

Originally Posted by jambo101

Seeing where technology has come just in the last 50 years gives pause for concern as to where it will lead in the next hundred years.

I like to frame it as last century and this century. There is lot of parallels between the industrial revolution and what will become know as the computer revolution 100 years from now. We're not even to the Model T stage yet and the rapid advancements are yet to come, people will look back at this time in wonderment at our caveman computer technology.

[thecoalman]

Originally Posted by Woof

Yes, that's one reason why I keep saying that reverting to pure capitalism is a very bad idea for the human race.

Yes it's a very big hurdle for more reasons than one, there is a very fine line maintaining that incentive to produce during this transitional period.

[jambo101]

I got a feeling that with our propensity to allow computers to do ever more of our work and thinking some time in the future human species may become irrelevant and the computer with its artificial intelligence may stop doing what we think it should do and go off in a direction of its own choosing fulfilling its own idea of a destiny relevant to the computer and not lts bygone human masters.
I got a bad feeling about the giving of artificial intellegence to computers as ultimately intelligence is intelligence whether it is deriverd from a binary code or chemical reactions in the brains of an animal.

[thecoalman]

Originally Posted by jambo101

I got a feeling that with our propensity to allow computers to do ever more of our work and thinking some time in the future human species may become irrelevant and the computer with its artificial intelligence may stop doing what we think it should do and go off in a direction of its own choosing fulfilling its own idea of a destiny relevant to the computer and not lts bygone human masters.

On the other hand a greater part of the population will be free to pursue pursue educating themselves. I don't think that desire for knowledge will evaporate from the entire population. I often do things myself that I could pay someone to do, the question asked is "why are you doing that?" The answer is because I can. It's kind of like asking the mountain climber why he's climbing the mountain, "because it's there".