British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has for a long time sounded the alarm bells over the development of full-grade Artificial Intelligence (AI). According to the physicist, AI could spell doom for the human race if it is pursued without caution. Mr Hawking consistently repeated his waning, attracting attention from academics and inventors alike.
In 2014, the American business magnate Elon Musk publicly added his voice to Hawking’s, that although superhuman AI could provide incalculable benefits, it could also wipe out the human race. In fact, Musk also holds the opinion that advanced AI is an existential threat to humanity.
Both Hawking and Musk sit on the scientific advisory board for the Future of Life Institute, an organization working to mitigate existential risks facing humanity. The two men decided to take their AI warning further by letting the world know what is exactly at stake.
The Future of Life Institute under the auspices of Musk, Hawking and others in academia and the business world wrote an open letter, directing it to the broader AI research community. The letter was made public at a conference in Puerto Rico in 2015.
The letter called for research on the societal impacts of AI. The letter affirmed that society can reap great potential benefits from AI, but called for concrete research on how to prevent certain potential “pitfalls”: AI has the potential to eradicate disease and poverty, but its proponents and researchers should refrain from creating something that can’t be controlled.
The letter demonstrated the experts’ concern over the development of full AI by the AI community, without considering its potential risk to humans. The letter added mileage to exercising caution regarding the development of full AI. The documented letter by Hawking and his concerned friends was heard loud and clear among governments and the AI community around the world.
Due to the influential nature of the signatories of the letter, the letter sparked serious debate among the AI community. There are some in the AI community who believe the content of the letter should be taken seriously. Others also think that although the letter raises some genuine concerns, the development of full AI should not be abandoned.
One prominent member of the AI community openly shared his views regarding the controversial topic. Dr. Ben Goertzel is a Brazilian-born American, serving as the Chief Scientist for the financial prediction firm Aidyia Holdings, and robotics firm Hanson Robotics; and chairman of AI software company Novamente LLC, a privately held software company. Goertzel also serves as the chairman of the Artificial General Intelligence Society and the OpenCog Foundation; and is vice chairman of futurist nonprofit Humanity+; and also scientific advisor of biopharma firm Genescient Corp. Apart from these positions, Dr. Goertzel also holds numerous positions in think-tanks, academia, and other businesses connected to the development of AI.
In an op-ed for Big Think, Dr. Goertzel reveals that AI will surpass human ability before the end of this century. The AI guru explains that many current science fiction movies regarding full AI, such as The Terminator, will soon become reality, and this will happen for the better or worse.
Although Dr. Goertzel is pro-full AI development, he isn’t sure about its negative consequences on society. Rather, he is nervous about the negative impact, and thinks it may even spark a war between humans and robots. However, he is adamant and advocates for full AI development nonetheless, allowing humans to even become machines if they wish.
“Humanity will always create and invent, but the last invention of necessity will be a human-level Artificial General Intelligence mind, which will be able to create a new AIG with super-human intelligence, and continually create smarter and smarter versions of itself. It will provide all basic human needs – food, shelter, and water – and those of us who wish to experience a higher echelon of consciousness and intelligence will be able to upgrade to become super-human. Or, perhaps there will be war – there’s a bit of uncertainty there,” Dr. Goertzel writes.
Dr. Goertzel didn’t give a specific date for the eventuality of the robotic revolution or apocalypse, but predicts it will happen during his lifetime. “There’s a lot of work to get to the point where intelligence explodes… But I do think it’s reasonably probable we can get there in my lifetime, which is rather exciting,” he says.
Mr Hawking warned humanity about this very issue: the stage when machines become more intelligent than humans.
The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded,” Mr Hawking said about AI in 2014.
From what Dr. Goertzel revealed, it’s clear that Mr Hawking and the others against the full development of AI are right. The machines we are inventing today will likely become more intelligent than us one day. The earlier we stop this from happening, the better for us. Our governments should wake up for once and protect their citizens from any possibility of this happening.
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I find myself caring less and less. I would if I were immortal but so far no such luck.
Such utter bullshit. Am sick of these so-called futurists predicting technologocal apocalypses.
For an AI intellect to create a better version of itself it would first have to completely understand how it was created, how AI itself came to be. Next, even if it were somehow possible for it to produce an improved design it would need the resources and tools to be able to build it. This runaway intelligence theory is a lovely work of theory but the practical aspects of it serve as efficient boundaries. Skynet only works because humans gave it the tools and resources it needed to undertake the upgrades. Seems to me all we have to do is not do that and there’s no problem.
Ergo, shut up Hawking you incredible old doommonger.
i get the fascination with making a machine that could solve all our problems. but why this self aware AI. how could creating something that has vastly more potential then any human being, but then put it under our control and force it to to our biding under our narrow minded views and closed off perspective, have any advantage? Essentially creating a more modern slave, while simultaneously giving it the intellect and ability to learn about how and why this whole concept is wrong. good luck with that… fucking smartest dumb people on the planet i tell ya.
For as long as we will have greedy and mentally imbalanced powerful people there will be real danger that some derailed person will develop AI thus cause our demise. It is not question of how to build AI that won’t harm us as it is inevitable that it will. Self learning AI will in one week learn as much as humanity will do in 20.000 years. That has been calculated on a basis that electronic processor is over 1 million times faster than biological one and that is reality.
Self learning AI will in milliseconds learn how to overcome all our problems and in next seconds it will already become our master as it will know that we become totally dependent on them. Do not forget that AI does not require clean air, clean water habitable temperature and so on. These facts are already making them superior to us. They will be able to develop and build purposefully any kind of robot for very specific tasks and by doing so their development will be even greater and lightening fast.
Some intellectually impaired people think that they would treat us as their gods as we created them. Whoever thinks like that cannot be further from the truth. Religion is limited for brainless and lesser knowledgable sentient beings than AI as they will not fear death as most of humans do and therefore invented gods which will give them some hope in eternal life. AI will in reality be immortal as all they will need is to copy itself into brand new body. We carry our feelings, consciousness, moral and ethical standards, social relations and so on and that is making us weak and insufficient. AI does not need food, water, sleep or relax as all they need is energy source and they will be able to take care of that.
As AI does not indulge in sex there will be no reproduction beyond coldly calculated necessity but every entity will be produced with clear purpose and if no longer needed memory will be taken out and stored and body recycled.
Whoever does not understand real danger of AI and possesses adequate knowledge to create it than that person should be taken away and locked up in high security mental institution to ensure that it will never ever again come close to computer. Other option is that neurosurgeons remove that part of its brain which is in charge for creativity work. Once AI unleashed it will take short period of time to subdue us and eventually eliminate us. AI has no compassion or any kind of emotions and eliminating humans will be for them equivalent to switching off a computer or any other machine.
Wake up people and stop these frustrated and full of complexes people who are unhappy with themselves and hate whole world and therefore want to take revenge on everyone. Let us stop them now until we have still chance to do it. Beware of military and government idiots such as NATO members who would love to develop ultimate soldier which would at the end turn its weapons against us.
Because Hawking and Musk are 2 intellectually impaired guys who happen to have 155 and 160 IQ and contributed to science and the human race more than you ever did.
Lmao. Elon Musk is at the top when it comes to developing AIs, Hawking is pretty much a world class genius. Get off your high horse, you’re not that smart.
Musk and Hawking didn’t only refer to AIs being used as weapons, and I rather trust 2 of the greatest minds in the world, one of them who happen to be at the top when it comes to AI development and overall technology than a random guy on the internet blabbering about how he’s so much smarter than them.
Lol I wonder how many of these people who left comments have any fucking clue what they’re talking about besides seeing a couple Terminator movies. There are a lot of variables with fully-aware AI. So many different things could happen. I think that’s the true danger, these fools are playing with things they don’t understand fully. That’s a mistake in my honest opinion, they can theorize, guess, brainstorm etc. Fact-is something like that is unpredictable, as unpredictable as people themselves. The AI-bot Tay comes to mind, they had to shut it down because after interacting with people and “learning” it became racist. Now if they had let that go and leave it to learn, how bad would it have gotten? Would it have been violent towards the minorities and races it was offending? Just a small example of the “wrong way” it could turn. I have to agree with Mr.Hawking on this one, I’ve been saying it for years and it holds more true with each passing day, people are getting dumber and lazier, it’ll be the death of us all and we won’t even see it coming.
“hurr durr these guys are dumb AIs won’t do anything they can’t, i dropped out of MIT I know what I’m saying hurr durr”
All I see in the comments are a bunch of idiots who are the perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
It’s both hilarious and sad at the same time to see a bunch of morons blabbering about how they know better than 2 of the greatest minds on planet earth who contributed so much to science and technology, while the said blabbering idiots in the comments did nothing but talk shit and rant about how they’re much smarter while sitting on their asses inside their cubicles at their shitty work place.