Should we be afraid of Artificial Intelligence?
Should we be afraid of Artificial Intelligence?
So before we jump right into this topic, let's define what Artificial Intelligence (AI) is. For this topic we will define AI as; A machine or program that is capable of receiving knowledge, learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception and language understanding.
OK, but then what is there to be afraid for you might ask? See, you now have pretty much everything a human has. Except for emotions and pain maybe. But here's the thing, computers, or maybe better said "electronic circuits" are about one million times faster than our neuron system. This means that we now have created some sort of superhuman intelligence. That's cool to think about, right? Yes, of course, we curious beings love to think about stuff like that.
Let's look into some interesting progress of AI development we already have in the world right now.
>DeepMind
AlphaGo
AlphaGo is a computer program that plays the Asian/Chinese board game Go. Go is a very complex board game which has 170^10 possible board configurations. AlphaGo managed to beat the world champion Lee Sedol 4 out of the 5 games back in 2016 with 4 - 6 weeks of learning.
AlphaGo Masters
AlphaGo Masters beat the world champion in 2017 3 out of the 3 games.
AlphaGo Zero
AlphaGo Zero managed to beat AlphaGo with 3 days of learning and AlphaGo Masters with 21 days of learning.
>OpenAI
Dota2
Dota2 is a free-to-play MOBA game. Dota2 has over 100 different characters you can play, and all of them have unique abilities and perks. In the game, you can also buy items which can add extra value to your character. Dota2 is arguably* more complex than Go. The Dota2 Bot managed to defeat multiple top rank players in a 1v1. The bot used complex strategies which it had created itself's. The Dota2 Bot learned all of this by just playing against itself's for a couple of months. They announced that the next step for OpenAI is to create a team of 5 bots.
>IBM
Watson
Watson is a question answering computer system capable of answering questions posed in 'natural language'. The computer was developed to answer questions on the quiz show Jeopardy. Watson competed against former winners Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings winning the first place prize of $1 million back in 2011. In 2013 the Watson software went on to help make decisions for lung cancer treatment.
NOTE: The developments above are not (yet) officially or fully AI
Let's get to the point
It's clear that with AI we are creating a superhuman, simply because computers are way faster, powerful and capable of more things at once. Those superhumans will* be better than us at pretty much everything. This means that they can help us with a lot of problems and exponentially advance our technologies. Obviously, they can do a lot of good for us. Bad things will happen when AI is in de hands of people with bad intentions or in the hands of only one group of people. If only one group of people had AI, they would have enormous amounts of power. You don't want a small group to have enormous amounts of power, it's probably better to distribute the power. If bad people have AI and the rest of the world does too, that wouldn't be a big problem. Would AI turn bad against us on it's own? If it does, why?
Let's also don't forget that pretty much the only reason humans exist and have existed is that we are the most intelligent. We are biologically not the strongest, fastest, largest etc. Back in the 'stone age', there were a lot of stronger dangerous animals, but we never went extinct.
So, Should we be afraid of AI? Well... Yes? Maybe? Hopefully not. But if AI seems to become a problem, it would definitely be one we would want to prevent from going bad, instead of trying to solve it already gone bad.
🤔 so, what do you think 🤔
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Hey, thanks for reading my post! I plan on posting more topics like this one. I'd like to hear about your opinions and discuss with you guys in the reply section.
Excuse me if my spelling and/or grammar is not always correct. English is not my native language.
I ain't skeered..
Wow nicely done. I like the voting poll you did! Is that a Steemit app?
@mindhacks Hey, thanks! It's actually a website called 'poll-maker'. The image is just a screenshot of the poll and I styled it with the SteemIt colors in mind. :)
I think we should be concerned, not so much worried. TODAY AI isn't nearly powerful enough, I don't think to concern us but, what about in the near future? Could it learn how to hack into a government computer system that controls nukes? Could it learn how to hack into a power company computer system that controls a Nuclear power plant? Would it then be able to do something to cause a meltdown of said system? Even if it is able, would it come up with reasoning to do it?
That's just a couple scenarios though. How about a power grid? Could it hack into a self driving car of someone that the AI just didn't "like" for whatever reason?
Could a AI system be liberal or conservative or something in between and actually do things to screw with a nations democracy?
Not worried about this TODAY, but in the future??
@oneissuevoter Hey! That's a great point you have here. If there were to exist a powerful AI today, it would probably be able to hack into those systems very easily. But what if there is an AI defending the systems? Will they fight against each other? It's fascinating to think about, but definitely needs to be taken very seriously. I like your thoughts on AI, you pointed out some good things!