Leading scientists and technology leaders warn us that we are close to the point where our technology reaches a determining point, a kind...
Leading scientists and technology leaders warn us that we are close to the point where our technology reaches a determining point, a kind of singularity, where the artificial intelligence (AI), that we are creating, becomes dominant in our society, replaces us, the humans, in many and most fields, making us obsolete and unnecessary. Is this a real threat? Should we be afraid of the AI?
This generation can really see how the AI develops and takes place, determining its place in our everyday life. It is very easy to see its impact when, for example, a car is moving without a driver. What a weird scenario. However, AI already took its place in many more areas. Digital assistants, many Internet-based services, even the simple Internet search command has AI in the background. There are many stock trades made by AI, without human intervention. This way, we put our money in the hands of the AI. There are factories where it's hard to find one working person. We are already beaten by and cannot even compete with AI in mind games like chess, go, and jeopardy, where the AI is not just smarter than us, but can use the human language too.
Are we losing against AI? Did it become smarter than we are? Is it already smarter than we are? Will we be obsolete and unnecessary? Or is it just another industrial revolution, something like we already had before? An industrial revolution can be shocking to society, as we saw it when the steam machine took place and lots of people lost their jobs. But society survived and not just survived but thrived. We do not want back the time before the steam machine. Most of us do not.
Is the AI revolution is the same as the earlier industrial revolution or is it different? We may say that this is different because the new machine takes away the jobs that we thought, we, the intelligent humans, are capable of doing only. These are not simple mechanical jobs, these are the jobs where our brain is really needed. What is left to us then?
We can think we are still ahead of the intelligent machine because the machine cannot creatively solve new problems, nor design new things which never existed before. Creativity still belongs to us. Or does it? If the AI can beat us at chess and Jeopardy, can trade in the market successfully, can predict weather really well, then for an AI to become creative is just a matter of time. Maybe. Maybe our smart machines could be creative, maybe they only need some improvement.
However, the real question, the essence of this problem, lies somewhere else.
Since the AI exists, it is a tool for us. It is doing what we tell it to do. It is doing it seemingly intelligently, and we call more and more machines smart. However, these machines are doing everything without their own will. We can see smart machines act intelligently as if they have a will as if they can decide and choose between choices, however, these decisions are rule-based, rules which are implanted by us, the designer, the human. Even if these rules can be modified by the machine, these modifications are rule-based, based on our rules. The AI does not have the capability to have its own will because this would require it to have its own consciousness. We do not know what consciousness is and so we cannot implement it into the AI. The AI is a tool, an advanced, intelligently behaving tool in our hand. And until it has its own consciousness, the AI is not a threat to our human existence; it won't conquer us because it doesn't want to. It does not want anything. It is under our will. It is just a machine.
If today's AI is just a machine, then today's AI problem is a societal problem, as the earlier industrial revolution was our society's problem too. It is society's task to find out how to live with it. AI eases our lives, makes it cozy, and takes many of our jobs away. But we saw this scenario before. And in that scenario, we did solve our problems for our benefits. It was not easy and will not be easy this time either. But we can, and we must find a solution. We must do it for our benefit again! AI is a social problem; society has to solve it.
Or to put it more simply, today's AI problem is a political issue instead of a threat to the human existence. We must see where the real problem is if we want to solve it successfully. The solution might need the help of the scientists, but basically, it is a political, a government issue. As it was earlier.
We can see how different governments react to this issue today. The reactions are often scary. The industrial revolution cannot stop and should not stop by political methods. The politicians should and must act in a progressive way. They must figure out, with the help of the scientists, what will happen to the society by this industrial revolution. They have the responsibility to find the way to turn this into the benefit of all, to the good of the people. And the right answer is not to stop this progression but to turn it for the benefit of the society. This is today's problem, and it is not an easy one. Many people will lose their jobs because of AI. However, the AI is ours, it is doing what we want from it. Make it do what it does for our benefit.
Is this picture too optimistic and idealistic? What if we can find the way to create AI with its own will, with its own consciousness? Maybe we can. Could the human race survive that too? This is in another thought...
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