“The rise of AI could be the worst or the best thing that has happened for humanity. AI could develop a will of its own ,” said
physicist Stephen Hawking .
“Success in creating effective AI, could be the biggest event in the history of our civilization. Or the worst. We just don’t know. So we cannot know if we will be infinitely helped by AI, or ignored by it and side-lined, or conceivably destroyed by it.”
“Unless we learn how to prepare for, and avoid, the potential risks, AI could be the worst event in the history of our civilization. It brings dangers, like powerful autonomous weapons, or new ways for the few to oppress the many. It could bring great disruption to our economy,” Hawking added.
“Perhaps we should all stop for a moment and focus not only on making our AI better and more successful, but also on the benefit of humanity,” Hawking said.
Who Gets to Determine?
Excuse me for asking, but who gets to determine, in advance, what is or what isn’t a “benefit of humanity”?
Is it me, you, Goldman Sachs, President Trump. the EU, China, ISIS, or AI itself?
I can partially answer that question. It sure isn’t me.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Natural stupidity will kill us long before AI gets a chance at us.
“Excuse me for asking, but who gets to determine, in advance, what is or what isn’t a ‘benefit of humanity’?”That’s an easy question to answer: Elizabeth Warren and the Democrat party.
I see AI as the cavalry that just might arrive in time to pickup from collapsing HI (human intelligence)
AI could want to destroy us. We would flee.
Maybe we lost before when women started to get the liberty to reproduce or not ? Who knows ?
Why bother with AI when real intelligence is doing a good job of destroying us.
Correct me if I m wrong, but I suppose that hawking himself benefit in this AI
“The rise of AI could be the worst or the best thing that has happened for humanity.” Somebody flip a coin.
we already live in a world where the systems we have created develop with no conscious intent on our part. separating thought and action gave western man his great advantage, but such an arrangement gives action a life of its own. as the bees of the machine world, our role is fixed, only massive social engineering will enable us to pollinate fields of our own choosing.
Long before AI becomes a threat, we’ll do ourselves in with genetic engineering. Imagine constructing a virus with any properties you wish and then using it as a weapon.
I agree with Stehpan’s fears of new ways for a little minority to control a majority. We’re going to have drones (AI enabled, the size of a tennis ball) that can beat a well-armed soldier in a 1-to-1 fight. 100 vs 100 fast information sharing will make armed humans look like balloons in front of a pillbox. Creating a swarm of millions of those drones is not too hard, is it? Killing off parts of a population is going to be just one mouse click away. And the guys doing the clicking are not going to be you, me, Mish or Stephan.
Don’t worry. Life goes on.
Einstein regretted of his nuclear invention.
@mish, is it still 2017? (and @brother, omg no “safety” driver!) https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/7/16615290/waymo-self-driving-safety-driver-chandler-autonomous
ALS is a progressive disease. I suppose it is possible he had some weird variation that simply stopped progressing at some point.
No doubt Hawking has something. But is it really ALS? My former wife lasted less than 3 years. 2-3 years is normal.
It seems like once a month, like clockwork, we get a headline from “Stephan Hawking.” The only benefit of this information is to see what it is that the intelligentsia wishes up to believe. ALS victims typically have a 5 years or less life expectancy. Only 5% survive more than 20 years. Stephan Hawking was diagnosed with ALS nearly 55 years ago. Believe what you want …
Being able to process more if-than-else statements faster or doing data mining more efficiently is NOT AI. Yet, this is what we are being sold. Human emotion, which is the key factor in decisions, has NEVER been programmed into ANY machine learning algorithms, and likely never will.
It’s actually nobody – the universe evolves in it’s own way and AI is coming whether we like it or not. However greater acceptance that freewill is a delusion might spread a bit more humility around the place.
I think our brains are thinking a little too much into the future. I have never seen a AI robot around town let alone the police or fire version. The self driving cars today can self drive for like 10 seconds before fail and who would put a missile in AI auto mode?
i expect killing is much more efficient
” Excuse me for asking, but who gets to determine, in advance, what is or what isn’t a “benefit of humanity”? “That’s the trillion dollar question that no one answers because those who live by it – government officials – always think they know the answer.
That being said, I am concerned about robots which can kill, that is, army or police robots programmed to neutralize a threat. It seems to me that if a robot can be designed to kill a threatening adversary, why not make them just a little more complex so that they can catch, rather than kill, the culprit?
So Hawking has been designated humanities guru. Yea he has a high IQ but hasn’t demonstrated a whole lot of common sense to me. This is at best a sick recluse who pours over data and thinks all day about who knows what. Sure doesn’t make him any more wise than any of the rest of us. Wisdom and intelligence do not go hand in hand.