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An artificial intelligence researcher reveals his greatest fears about the future of AI

By Nand Kishor |Email | Aug 8, 2017 | 10602 Views

As an artificial intelligence researcher, I often come across the idea that many people are afraid of what AI might bring. It's perhaps unsurprising, given both history and the entertainment industry, that we might be afraid of a cybernetic takeover that forces us to live locked away, Matrix-like, as some sort of human battery.



Fear of the unforeseen
The HAL 9000 computer, dreamed up by science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke and brought to life by movie director Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey, is a good example of a system that fails because of unintended consequences. In many complex systems-the RMS Titanic, NASA's space shuttle, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant-engineers layer many different components together. The designers may have known well how each element worked individually, but didn't know enough about how they all worked together.

That resulted in systems that could never be completely understood, and could fail in unpredictable ways. In each disaster-sinking a ship, blowing up two shuttles, and spreading radioactive contamination across Europe and Asia-a set of relatively small failures combined together to create a catastrophe.
I can see how we could fall into the same trap in AI research. We look at the latest research from cognitive science, translate that into an algorithm, and add it to an existing system. We try to engineer AI without understanding intelligence or cognition first.

Systems like IBM's Watson and Google's Alpha equip artificial neural networks with enormous computing power, and accomplish impressive feats. But if these machines make mistakes, they lose on "Jeopardy!" or don't defeat a Go master; these are not world-changing consequences. Indeed, the worst that might happen to a regular person as a result is losing some money betting on their success.


Fear of misuse


Another possibility that's farther down the line is using evolution to influence the ethics of artificial intelligence systems. It's likely that human ethics and morals, such as trustworthiness and altruism, are a result of our evolution-and factor in its continuation. We could set up our virtual environments to give evolutionary advantages to machines that demonstrate kindness, honesty, and empathy. This might be a way to ensure that we develop more obedient servants or trustworthy companions and fewer ruthless killer robots.


Fear of wrong social priorities



Instead of getting medical aid in an emergency room staffed by potentially overtired doctors, patients could get an examination and diagnosis from an expert system with instant access to all medical knowledge ever collected-and get surgery performed by a tireless robot with a perfectly steady "hand." Legal advice could come from an all-knowing legal database; investment advice could come from a market-prediction system.

In our current society, automation pushes people out of jobs, making the people who own the machines richer and everyone else poorer. That is not a scientific issue; it is a political and socioeconomic problem that we as a society must solve. My research will not change that, though my political self-together with the rest of humanity-may be able to create circumstances in which AI becomes broadly beneficial instead of increasing the discrepancy between the one percent and the rest of us.

Fear of the nightmare scenario
There is one last fear, embodied by HAL 9000, the Terminator, and any number of other fictional superintelligences: If AI keeps improving until it surpasses human intelligence, will a superintelligence system (or more than one of them) find it no longer needs humans? How will we justify our existence in the face of a superintelligence that can do things humans could never do? Can we avoid being wiped off the face of the Earth by machines we helped create?




Fortunately, we need not justify our existence quite yet. We have some time-somewhere between 50 and 250 years, depending on how fast AI develops. As a species we can come together and come up with a good answer for why a superintelligence shouldn't just wipe us out. But that will be hard: Saying we embrace diversity and actually doing it are two different things-as are saying we want to save the planet and successfully doing so.


Source: Quartz