Advances in AI technology are all around us, Google have their Google Now service, Apple have Siri, Microsoft have Cortana and that’s just the world of mobile phone technology and search engines! Beyond that we have self driving cars, supercomputers such as the Jeopardy winning Watson and more. These are great technologies in many ways, but legendary theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, as well a few other leading scientists such as Stuart Russell, Max Tegmar and Frank Wilczek have giving their opinion on the world of AI.
They warned that the race to create advanced AI may not be a great idea, “”The potential benefits are huge. Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history.” they said, “unfortunately, it might also be the last” they added. They went on to discuss that while we do have the technology to begin creating computers that are more powerful than the human brain, it may not be a good idea to do so. When AI gets so intelligent that it can start improving independently, then we may run into issues.
“One can imagine such technology outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders and developing weapons we cannot even understand,” the scientists write. “Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all.”
They added that there are several organizations doing research on this subject to help learn and avoid the risks involved, but will anyone heed their advice? It all sounds a little like Skynet from Terminator, or countless other science fiction stories, but the fact is, our technological advancement really is heading in that direction.
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