When it comes to artificial intelligence, our technological prophets speak the language of magic, gods and monsters (who have not yet had time to read our translation of the series of articles by Tim Urban: "Elon Musk's Neuralink" - highly recommended). It all started back in 2014, when Elon Musk, speaking at a symposium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, compared AI development to "summoning a demon." But, as the example of Faust shows, before paying the bills, you can get your benefit from the deal with Mephistopheles. Apparently, therefore, Musk slightly changed his mind and later added that the result of the death of humanity at the hands of AI could be in the nature of an "unintended consequence", and not an intentional goal.
According to the American entrepreneur, owner of SpaceX and Tesla, AI will definitely be able to perform useful functions, such as protecting us from electronic spam. However, here Musk wondered: would AI consider that the best way to get rid of spam would be to get rid of people? He decided to share his thoughts on this topic on the pages of Vanity Fair magazine, where, as an example, he talked about AI that will be developed, say, in order to plant, grow and harvest strawberries from the fields.
“Over time, performing this task more and more effectively, self-developing, he will become ideal in this matter. The only thing he will want to do is do his job best. And at some point the time may come when the whole world will be covered with strawberry fields and there will simply be no place for people in it."
Musk recently teamed up with Sam Altman (another American entrepreneur who is also very concerned about AI) to start Open AI, investing $ 1 billion in it. The challenge for the non-profit research firm will be to find ways to develop safe AI. Altman, in an interview with Vanity Fair, said that the organization's goal is to prepare everyone for the next decade, in which AI will reign, and all investments will be centered around a few "wizards" who know the right "spells" to control them. Again, talk about magicians, if you understand what it is about.
Elon Musk, as it turned out, is not at all alone in his pessimistic and apocalyptic views on the problem of AI. He is supported, for example, by Bill Gates, who believes that AI will very quickly replace people in their workplaces. Support is also expressed by Stephen Hawking, who back in 2014 in an interview with the BBC shared his thoughts that "the development of full-fledged artificial intelligence can end the human race."
Still, many other tech giants are expecting a more utopian scenario from the development of AI. Mark Zuckerberg, for example, wrote in one of his Facebook posts in 2016:
"I think we can build AI that will work for us and help us."
And speaking later at the F8 2016 Keynote Summit, he called on humanity to "put fear aside and better turn to hope." Larry Page, co-founder of Google, predicts a world in which AI will allow people to "have more time for their families or pursuing their own interests."
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Steve Wozniak described the options ahead of us in an interview with Australian Financial Review:
“Will we become gods? Or pets? Or will we be the usual ants that will eventually be stepped on?"
Among the predictions of leading experts in their fields, there are opinions with which it is very difficult to argue and agree with, for example, Eliezer Yudkowsky, a researcher at the Institute of Singularity on the creation of Artificial Intelligence, who once commented on the issue under discussion:
"It's impossible to predict the outcome, if only because the AI will be much smarter than me."
Whether we like it or not, AI is getting closer and closer to our daily lives, and its first echoes can be seen, for example, in the most modern facial recognition programs used by Facebook, or in the form of digital assistants Siri or Cortana. Artificial intelligence has the potential to revolutionize many sectors and areas of life. Harpit Buttar, an analyst at Frost & Sullivan, once expressed in a press release the opinion that "by 2025, AI systems will be represented in one way or another in all spheres of society, including healthcare." Artificial intelligence is predicted to have a complete solution to road traffic problems. Experts at the University of Illinois agree with this, who say that AI systems can save us from the problems of traffic congestion.and car accidents will be a thing of the past.
The development of AI, like any other technology, cannot be viewed separately from the context from a moral point of view as bad or good - everything will depend on ourselves, on how we want to use this technology. While the tech community has split into two distinct camps on the issue of AI, more important is the fact that such discussions generally take place in the tech environment. AI is a very powerful technology, and whatever impact it ultimately has on our lives, you need to understand that the impact will be very serious.
NIKOLAY KHIZHNYAK