The debate over artificial intelligence, especially over the last couple of years, "usually goes one of two ways," said Vox: AI is "either the beginning of the end of human civilization or a shortcut to utopia." The truth, as is so often the case with new technology, may lie somewhere in between.
Utopia AI-powered assistants already promise a "workplace utopia, making employees more productive, improving workflows and helping share knowledge across an organization," said Fortune. In his latest book, "Deep Utopia," Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at the University of Oxford in the U.K., imagines AI technology progressing to the point at which it can "do all economically valuable work at near-zero cost," said The Economist. Speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival in June, Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman predicted a future in which new scientific and cultural knowledge will be "widely open-sourced and available to everybody."
Dystopia In a widely read op-ed at Time last year, AI pioneer Eliezer Yudkowsky warned that the most likely outcome of "building a superhumanly smart AI" is that "literally everyone on Earth will die." AI skeptics like Yudkowsky "envision a future in which amoral AI continues on its path of increasing intelligence to a tipping point beyond which their intelligence will be so far beyond us that we can't stop them from inadvertently destroying us," said Skeptic.
Somewhere in between Most AI scientists believe the way forward is moderation, making machines "incrementally smarter and our lives gradually better." Technology historian Kevin Kelly compares this pathway for AI to the evolution of automobiles: We may not have flying cars, but vehicles have become faster, safer and more efficient over the past 50 years.
Who knows which of the two extreme scenarios is nearer the truth, said Vox. But the "polarized nature of the AI discourse is itself interesting." In a period of rapid technological growth and political disruption, there are "many reasons to worry about the course we're on," added Vox. And that at least is something "almost everyone can agree with." |