Our world is ever evolving and changing. What used to be imaginations and science fiction fantasies are becoming our daily routine. Ideas such as virtual reality, space exploration, portable computers and now artificial intelligence are the order of the day. The line between humanity and scientific innovations are becoming blurrier by the day. More companies are beginning to channel their energy toward artificial intelligence.
For some who are unfamiliar with the subject, Artificial Intelligence can simply be said to be an aspect of science concerned with making a machine exhibit intelligent behaviour in both hardware and software components. In layman term, we can say it is getting machines to behave like human beings.
The core of the AI development is that machines, learn themselves and over a period of time become more intelligent. An example of the uses of Artificial intelligence is when you google “writing help in the UK”, and it gives a whole lot of options.
Several companies around the world are investing in artificial intelligence because they believe it is the future. Companies like Minecraft, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft and these are the one who has openly admitted to it.
Reasons to Worry About Artificial Intelligence
Most leader and companies at the top of the tech industry have devoted time and energy to the development of artificial intelligence. Some of these science heroes we look up to have advised that the concept of artificial intelligence should be watched cautiously.
When Stephen Hawking was questioned about artificial intelligence, he warned the public saying that any additional progress in their field would be a fatal mistake. His thoughts were that Artificial intelligence has the ability to redevelop and redesign itself, faster than humans who created it and so this may pose a serious problem.
Elon Musk, The CEO of Tesla, described it as “summoning a demon” you should not call except you have a way to control it. Bill Gates is of the opinion that initial AI devices will the fine to live with, but as time goes and they learn more and more from humans, they become more intelligent and powerful and inevitably more dangerous. However, even though he has this thought, he is of the belief that the positive prospects of it outweigh the Negative consequences.
Artificial Intelligence Today
As of today, companies have been able to Achieve Applied AI which performs very narrow tasks that we use in our every day living such as face recognition, Voice and language recognition and processing, internet searches and the likes. Artificial Intelligence can ultimately be said to split into two parts Applied Artificial Intelligence and General Artificial Intelligence.
According to Elon Musk, research and development have gone way deeper and broader than applied AI, and unless you are exposed to Forum like Google Deepmind or Vicarious, you are completely Clueless on how fast or how much progress Artificial intelligence is making. According to him, we have a bomb at risk of exploding in our faces with a time within Five to at most Ten Years.
Dangers of Artificial Intelligence
Although we are yet to achieve superintelligent machines, we have to prepare for all possible outcomes some of the fears are
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The technology in the wrong hands
General AI can become very powerful. Therefore, there is the thought that if this technology falls into the wrong hands, it can be reprogrammed and reconfigured to bring damnation to the world. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin Said:
“Artificial Intelligence is the future, not only for Russia but for all humankind It comes with enormous opportunities, but also threats that are difficult to predict. Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.”
One of the dangers of artificial intelligence is that it may become an autonomous weapon in the hands of an individual or government which has little or no respect for human life.
It can be used as a tool for invading privacy, social manipulation and oppression. individuals are monitored and targeted based on the analysis of the predispositions and ideologies in order to influence their actions, inactions, political decisions, freedom of expression and other basic human behaviours.
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Machines and Human Values
The ability to be effective and efficient, void of human emotions and sentiments is what humans value the most about AIs. The way AI would interpret human actions and inaction could be completely different and dangerous.
There are some machines that have a friendliness super-goal and can be used for example to help with classroom or school activities. If you had a UK essay Writing contest and you used an AI that was programmed for academic activities to help, it won’t be considered as cheating because of its programmed goal.
Since these machines, can gather, track and evaluate data about you, it can wield this information to its advantage and against you. An A.I that is programmed to be apathetic simply does not really know how you feel or want you to think, it just wants to achieve the goal it has been programmed to achieve which might be detrimental to human life.
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The Extinction of Human Kind
The Ultimate Fear in the rise of AI is that of Human Extinction. Since AIs have the ability to learn, unlearn and reprogram itself there is the fear that if human existence or behaviour is against the AI’s goal, it will wage war against humanity until it breaks the human will or destroy humans altogether.
Is AI Dangerous? Yes, it is. It can upgrade, self-improve and replicate itself especially when it gets the point of being smarter than the humans who created it. At that point, there is no going back. What AI is capable of is Infinite, and that is one of the dangers of Artificial Intelligence.
Due to all these thoughts, the Question Is AI Dangerous? Is one of the most asked questions of our time. We cannot say that it is completely safe. However, we cannot remain stagnant for fear of the unknown we can only broaden our mind to the possibility of a greater good and find measures to employ in order to guaranty the safety and survival of human race.