Future-AI Edition

Artificial intelligence is all the rage in the world today with predictions of robots taking over the economy and replacing most human work by the 2050s.

But what does the term really mean today?

When you think of AI most people have an image like this in their brain…

Photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash

Or maybe a more sinister image like one of these guys from popular science fiction.

The Terminato
To get this: https://www.sideshowtoy.com/photo.php?sku=902662

Whaaat is this?

But the reality is both less scary and more scary at the same time. Confusing, I know…

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

The less scary part is that most AI systems at the moment are really just machine learning algorithms. This is called general narrow intelligence. The more data the system has then the better it can react to new data which comes in.

This is what Google’s self driving car sees as it drives around.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/image/MTk0ODU0MQ

So the more driving it does and the more data it has then the better off the system has to react to new things it sees in the future. So that’s it, more data, less problems…

Now for the scary part…

New systems are being developed which can learn from past mistakes without using new data points necessarily. It can use neural networks (complex math basically) to figure out what to do next and the scientists who created the systems don’t understand how they work…

Photo by William Bout on Unsplash

Who cares though?

So what? Why should you care about machine learning or AI?

One good reason is that people will create these systems to do one task and give it the instructions to do it better and better in any way that it can figure out how. For example, a machine that was asked to create lots of nice machine written envelopes might one day decide that all of the nutrients in humans should instead be used to create more envelopes in the world. Therefore killing all of humanity will help the system better fulfill its duty to make more envelopes....

More on that here (https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html)

Photo by Madi Robson on Unsplash

I know...I need a hug too after that last part…

The real danger is that we might not realize these systems have gotten that sophisticated until it is too late…

But all is not lost, we’re smart, right? We went to the moon! (More than once actually.)

Photo by Aman Shrivastava on Unsplash

At the recent Governor’s Association Conference, billionaire entrepreneur, Elon Musk suggested that we monitor this type of technological development globally in the same way that we are careful about chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons technology. Because in the future this...

Photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash

Might be closer to the power of one of these…

...than you might imagine.

But what do you think dear readers? Hype or maybe not? Let’s hash it out in the comment section below.

Thanks for reading!

(CH)