Should We Be Afraid Of AI? AACSB Standards: Analytical Thinking, Application In the movie, The Terminator (1984) the U.S

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Should We Be Afraid Of AI?
AACSB Standards: Analytical Thinking,
Application
In the movie, The Terminator (1984) the U.S.
put its nuclear arsenal under the control of the Skynet software
program. This was done in order to remove errored or capricious
human decision making from the system. Skynet began to learn at a
rapid rate, became “self aware”, and quickly concluded that humans
were a threat to its existence. Government analysts detected this
and tried to pull the plug on Skynet. In retaliation, Skynet
launched nuclear missiles against Russia, correctly anticipating a
nuclear counterattack. In the aftermath of the world-wide
devastation, Skynet created an army of hunter killer machines and
other weaponry, in order to round up and exterminate all humans. Of
course, in the end, humans prevailed. An entertaining science
fiction story. The operative word in that literary label
is fiction, not science. Right?
AI practitioners work on knowledge representation and reasoning,
machine learning, natural language processing, machine vision,
robotics, and related areas. Progress in these areas has meant
progress in automation and increased productivity. Of course,
automation has always implied some lost employment, but otherwise
the benefits to society from productivity increases are
substantial.
Thus, you would think that AI has been a good thing, and that we
should support its development. If so, you might be surprised to
learn that many prominent scientists, for example Stephen Hawking
and Elon Musk, have seen AI as a threat. They fear that humans may
lose control of AI in the very long run. As time goes on, computers
and networks will become faster. Machine learning will improve,
giving rise to intelligence and knowledge that humans cannot
attain. Computer systems will learn to improve their own software
and hardware without human intervention. Individual computer
systems could develop ways to connect and work together over large
scale networks. At some point, computer systems could see their own
claim on the world’s resources, and their own goals, as superior to
human claims. At that point, our status, if not our existence,
would be imperiled.
Musk suggests that a U.S. government agency study the growth of
AI, and propose rules governing its long-term development. Musk is
an initial investor in the Future of Life Institute, which is
dedicated to research on controlling AI development. The
Institute’s 2017 open letter stated: “The progress in AI research
makes it timely to focus research not only on making AI more
capable, but also on maximizing the societal benefit of AI”. Many
thousands of scientists, and other prominent people, signed this
open letter.
Musk and eight other investors have pledged to invest a billion
dollars in the OpenAI company. The company’s charter states:
“OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence
(AGI)—by which we mean highly autonomous systems that outperform
humans at most economically valuable work—benefits all of humanity.
We will attempt to directly build safe and beneficial AGI, but will
also consider our mission fulfilled if our work aids others to
achieve this outcome” OpenAI scientists – and Elon Musk – believe
in the “democratization” of AI. This means that the development of
AI should not be centralized in the hands of a few large
corporations. To counter centralization, OpenAI is developing AI
software tools, and releasing them to the world.
In his last book, published posthumously in October 2018,
Stephen Hawking warned us about challenges that threaten mankind,
including the long-term development of AI. He says, “the real risk
with AI isn’t malice, but competence” – i.e., future AI-based
systems will try to achieve their goals, which may not square with
ours. Hawking is known for making his points with humor. He cites a
typical objection to his fears. A person asked him, “Why are we so
worried about AI? Surely humans are always able to pull the plug?”
His response: “People asked a computer, ‘Is there a God?’ And the
computer said, ‘There is now,’ and fused the plug.”
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