Will the Emergence of Artificial Intelligence Mean the End of the World as We Know It?

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been a topic of discussion for decades, but recently, some famous people have been making public statements about the potential dangers of AI. Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Stephen Hawking have all expressed concerns about the possible dangers of AI. In this article, we will explore the emergence of AI and whether it could mean the end of the world as we know it.

The Emergence of Artificial Intelligence

Ever since the DAWN of the computer age, authors, scientists, philosophers, and movie makers have been talking about AI in one form or another. In the 1960s and 1970s, we were told that we were just one step away from making a computer that can think. Obviously, that didn't happen, and today's AI experts are less specific about when the problems of creating an AI will be solved. They are also more circumspect about what AI actually means. AI is a hard thing to define. It certainly isn't just knowledge. When talking about AI, people start to use words like self-awareness, sentience, abstract thinking, understanding, consciousness, mind, learning, and intuition.

The subject of general intelligence and artificial intelligence is obviously quite emotive, and it's certainly profound. That's why the AI community has come up with three specific words to help define what they mean by artificial intelligence. Those words are weak AI, strong AI, and artificial superintelligence.

Weak AI

A weak AI is a system that can simulate or imitate intelligence. However, at no point does it actually have a mind or self-awareness. For example, when I was 10 or 11 years old, my grandfather wrote a chatbot on a microcomputer. I was able to Type in sentences, and it would reply with intelligent and even witty comments. That was amazing for an eleven-year-old, and You couldn't even consider it to be weak AI. However, if you multiplied that up by several factors of magnitude, you start to get the idea of what I'm talking about.

When we talk to our smartphones and ask it a question about the weather or about sports scores, that's weak AI. Now, multiply that again by several factors of magnitude, and you'll get an understanding of where things are going and what we could even achieve within the next few years.

We ki can be divided into two specific groups: generalized AI and specific narrow AI. The narrow weak AI that we see today is the kind of program that competes with chess masters or the kind of program that IBM built with its Watson system when it was able to play Jeopardy and beat the champions at their own game. If you imagine in the future, we could take those specific narrow systems and combine them into a more general system, then that is generalized weak AI.

Strong AI

Strong AI is a theoretical computer system that actually has a mind. To all intents and purposes, it is the same as a human in terms of understanding, free will, consciousness, and so on. It doesn't simulate consciousness; it has consciousness. It doesn't simulate free will; it has free will, and so on.

When science fiction writers and philosophers talk about AI, they generally mean strong AI. The Hal 9000 was strong AI. The Cylons are strong AI. Skynet is strong AI. The robots in Asimov stories are strong AI. The computers that run the Matrix are strong AI, and so on.

The thing about strong AI is that it can perform artificial intelligence research itself. That means it can Create a better version of itself, one that's more intelligent, one that's faster. It can upgrade itself to be more intelligent and faster. That means it can grow, and that's what people are worried about.

Artificial Super Intelligence

Assuming that it is possible to create strong AI and that it has the same general level of intelligence as a human, and assuming it then performs artificial intelligence research itself and grows, this will eventually lead to the emergence of artificial superintelligence (ASI). ASI is an artificial intelligence that is far superior to humans in terms of its speed and intelligence. It will be able to solve problems orders of magnitude much faster than any human can. It will be super intelligent.

In his book on artificial superintelligence, Nick Bostrom Talks about what the emergence of an ASI will mean for us. If We Are unable to restrain an ASI, what will be the outcome? As you can imagine, parts of the book talk about the end of the human race as we know it. The idea, of course, is that there will be a thing called a singularity, a major event that changes the course of the human race, and that can include extinction.

Arguments Against Strong AI

There are actually some very strong arguments against the emergence of strong AI and artificial superintelligence. One of the best arguments against the idea that an AI can have a mind was put forward by John Searle, an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at Berkeley. It's known as the Chinese room argument, and it goes like this:

Imagine a locked room with a man inside who doesn't speak any Chinese. In the room, he has a rulebook that tells him how to respond to messages in Chinese. The rulebook doesn't translate the Chinese into his native language; it just tells him how to form a reply Based on what is given outside the room. A native Chinese speaker passes messages under the door to the man. The man takes the messages, looks up the symbols, and follows the rules about which symbol to write in the reply. The replies then pass to the person outside. Since the reply is in good Chinese, the person outside the room will believe that the person inside the room Speaks Chinese. If the replies are sufficiently interesting, the idea that the man in the room speaks Chinese is reinforced. For example, if the note pushed under the door asks what will be the weather next week, and the reply was, "I don't know. I've been stuck in this room since last Tuesday," then the person outside the room will be further convinced that the man inside the room is a Chinese speaker.

The key points are that the man in the room does not speak Chinese, the man in the room does not understand his messages, and the man in the room does not understand the replies he is writing. When you Apply this idea to AI, you can see very quickly that a machine doesn't actually have intelligence. It just mimics intelligence. It Never actually understands what it's receiving and understands its replies. It's just following a set of rules. As John Searle put it, syntax is insufficient for semantics.

Another argument against strong AI is the fact that computers can't have consciousness, and they'll never have consciousness because consciousness can't be computed. This is the idea in Sir Roger Penrose's book, "The Emperor's New Mind." In the book, he says that comprising of non-computational elements, computers can never do what human beings can.

The Possibility of Strong AI

Not all AI experts think that strong AI is possible. Professor Kevin Warwick of Reading University, who is sometimes known as Captain Cyborg due to his predisposition to implanting various bits of tech into his body, is a proponent of strong AI. However, Professor Mark Bishop of Goldsmith's University London is a vocal opponent of strong AI. What is even more interesting is that Professor Warwick used to be Professor Bishop's boss when they worked together at Reading University. Two experts who work together have very different ideas about strong AI.

If faith is defined as the conviction of things yet unseen, then you need to have faith to believe in strong AI. Actually, it's a blind faith because there are no indications at all at the moment that strong AI is at all possible.

The Growth of Weak AI

The growth of weak AI is going to be rapid and fast. During Google I/O 2015, the search giant even included a section in its keynote speech on deep neural networks. These simple weak AIs are being used in Google's search engine, in Gmail, and in Google's photo service. Like most technologies, progress in this area will Snowball, with each step building on the work done previously. Ultimately, services like Google Now, Siri, and Cortana will become very easy to use due to their natural language processing ability, and we will look back and chuckle at how primitive it all was.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the emergence of AI is a fascinating topic that has captured the imagination of many people. While there are concerns about the possible dangers of AI, it's important to remember that weak AI is already here and is growing rapidly. The idea of strong AI and artificial superintelligence is still a matter of debate, and there are strong arguments both for and against it. However, it's clear that AI will Continue to play an increasingly important role in our lives, and we need to be prepared for the changes that it will bring.

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