While the world prepares for the return of the legendary film epic "The Terminator", and Google is preparing to present a new version of its operating system with the somewhat frightening name Android, Steve Jobs' Apple ally Steve Wozniak is seriously warning about the problems that may await humanity.
In a recent interview with the major Australian publication The Australian Financial Review, Wozniak joins the industry masters who look into the not-so-distant future not with skepticism, but with quite tangible apprehension.
The 64-year-old engineer, who, in addition to working at Apple, has many different projects in Silicon Valley, shared with reporters a rather disturbing thought:
Sooner or later, computers will take over. There is no doubt about it, - said Steve.
Wozniak is not the only industry figure to voice concerns about this. Recently, many famous people in the world of electronics have been drawing public attention to the threat that the development of computer technologies may pose for the future of the Earth. The stumbling block remains the creation of real artificial intelligence capable of abstract thinking. Despite the fact that the fundamental possibility of the existence of this type of computers has not yet been proven, the prospects for such a breakthrough in science can hardly be overestimated, because it can solve a whole range of problems of modern society, ranging from the creation of ultra-reliable data encryption algorithms and ending with the almost complete replacement of a person in hazardous industries.
As you know, everything in this world has two sides, and the main question - the assessment of the possible consequences for the person himself - is still open, occupying the minds of not only science fiction writers, but also leading experts in the electronic industry. For example, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, the world's largest electric vehicle manufacturer, calls the possible creation of artificial intelligence "the greatest threat to the existence of the human race." Microsoft founder Bill Gates shares a similar opinion:
I agree with Elon, and the reason for such a careless attitude to this topic remains unclear to me, - he notes in his blog on the popular resource Reddit.
Gates believes that the development of technology is proceeding by leaps and bounds and the emergence of computers that can seriously alarm their creators - a matter of no more than a few decades. However, his forecast looks quite optimistic against the background of the assumption made by the famous theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, who believes that the emergence of AI may even become the beginning of the end of humanity:
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If we can make robots smarter than ourselves, then nothing will prevent them from easily bypassing us in development and inventing, for example, a weapon, the principles of which we simply cannot understand, Hawking fears.
Even if not everything is so bad, the role of man in the computerized society of the future still remains unclear. Wozniak suggests that machines can simply take jobs away from people:
Perhaps I am inclined to consider the fears of Stephen and Elon fair. If computers can replace a person in everything, then over time they will simply displace him from everywhere due to low efficiency, says the engineer.
In the same interview, Steve draws a very interesting analogy:
I don’t know who we will turn into - some kind of deity or domestic animals. Maybe neither in those, nor in the others, because they just step on the ants, right?
Be that as it may, it is not possible to stop the inexorable movement of scientific and technological progress, and the world can see the first semblance of artificial intelligence in the very near future. Against the background of realizing this fact, these words of a former Apple engineer make you think especially:
When I imagine that I will become a pet for the dodgy machines of the future, I involuntarily ask myself - is my dog happy?