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Assessing Artificial Intelligence For Humanity Will AI Be The Our Biggest Ever Advance or The Biggest Threat Opinion
Assessing Artificial Intelligence For Humanity Will AI Be The Our Biggest Ever Advance or The Biggest Threat Opinion
Assessing
ecent rapid advance-
R
ments in Artificial
Intelligence (AI) are
Artificial Intelligence
arguably the most
important dimension
of humanity’s progress to date. As
for Humanity
members of the human race, that
is, homo sapiens, we are defined
by our capacity for cognition. Until
now, humans were the only species
capable of higher cognitive func-
tions. But today AI has advanced to
Will AI be Our Biggest Ever
a stage where on many cognition- Advance — or the Biggest Threat?
related tasks it can match and even
surpass the performance of humans.
Examples include not only AI’s spec-
tacular successes in winning Go [1],
chess [2], and other board games
with humans, and in surpassing
humans on fully defined world puz-
zles. But AI is also now achieving
extremely high efficiency in practical
applications such as speech and
object recognition, self-driving cars,
intelligent tutoring systems, efficient
decision support systems, and in the
capacity to detect patterns in Big iStock/LagartoFilm
the gradual degradation and point of view there is no present due to mobile technologies
plausible path from today’s and ambient intelligence.
disappearance of what make state of the art to the vicious In this grey perspective, the criti-
super-mind. Today’s AIs cal question concerns the degree to
human experience and are all Turing machines and which individuals, who are elements
existence meaningful. learning is mostly about of this global system, have freedom
complex statistical mod- of choice and action, and to what
eling and optimization on degree are they “enslaved” by the
chance of prevailing in the competi- huge data sets, while reasoning is system. Are the internal processes
tion with Function-Oriented AI. about information representation, of a human, in effect, dictated by the
efficient search, and clever appli- arising, global social-technical sys-
Creation of a Vicious cation of complex rule systems. tem, its algorithms and its emergent
Super Mind Clearly, we cannot prove beyond processes and goals (or more accu-
The most catastrophic “dark” scenario doubt that sufficiently complex statis- rately, quasi-goals, understood as
envisioning AI apocalypse is the cre- tical analysis of sufficiently large data standards of regulation)?
ation of a super-intelligence surpass- sets will not lead to the emergence of In this negative scenario, humans
ing that of humans that will rapidly consciousness. But there is no solid are losing their freedom and becom-
advance by accessing Big Data, scientific evidence indicating that ing elements that process infor-
super strong learning algorithms such an emergence of consciousness mation in the service of the global
and positive feedback loops created could happen, or how it could do so. techno-social system. The essence
by self-improving AI architecture. As of this question is: what are the real
soon as AI significantly surpasses Emergence of a Global Socio- chances for humans to break-out of
human intelligence it becomes a nat- Technological Quasi-Mind the choices dictated by the system of
ural competition to humanity. The nat- While not completely ruling-out the which they are an element? What are
ural features of advanced AI systems likelihood of this futuristic scenario their chances to retain the capacity for
according to this scenario, likely lead of the creation of a vicious super independent, critical thinking? Can
to the realization of this dark out- mind, we argue that the danger of AI they retain emotions and feelings dic-
come. The principle of self-preserva- may come in a somewhat different, tated by their internal processes, rather
tion would lead to the development more “grey” form. We also argue than those dictated by information tai-
of defensive strategies on the part of that this scenario is likely to be lored to manipulate their emotions,
the AI. These AI defensive strategies, already occurring. In this “grey” sce- or by autonomous decision-making?
such as hiding itself, replication, nario the danger is not an apoca- To what degree do these process-
and resource maximization would lypse of physical elimination of the es serve humans’ true needs, values,
result in competitive behaviors, and human race by an alternative, supe- and goals versus those of the techno-
rapid physical expansion [4]. rior, artificial, self-aware mind. Rath- social global super-computer? An-
If AI can take control of military er the danger lies in the gradual other dimension of this question is
applications, for example automat- disappearance of what makes us “to what degree do interactions and
ed weapon systems, it would be human, and of what makes our exis- contacts between individuals retain
in position to wipe out humanity tence meaningful. We are talking a human character, characterized