Our brains are remarkable instruments. It has helped in understanding the evolution, in devising superior technology that facilitates effortless lifestyle, and at the same time, in creating weapons that could wipe out humanity. The most fascinating and unbelievable one is, it can process evidence even when unconscious.
Our intellect is capable of everything, but can it create intellect in a machine.
You can’t refute a computer’s ability to process reasoning and logic, but can it think?
The term, ‘Artificial Intelligence’ was first coined by John McCarthy in 1956.
With so many innovations going around, it is only a matter of time when artificial intelligence would be developed in its true form.
What then?
How will it decode the world around it that is so massive, complex, and inscrutable?
“The reality of such technology is so possible, the development of full artificial intelligence could spell ”, said theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, ramifications of that, in his words, could be, “the end of the human race”
Let’s analyze:
Friendliness is something human beings are born with, AI’s will be born only with objectives
Imagine you are locked in a room with the most dangerous criminal of all times and an artificial intelligence is assigned the job to judge who walks out of it. Both of your identities have been concealed and the evaluation of innocence will be calculated on the basis of a series of questions.
So, without taking into account factors like past records, behavior, and other inherent features that describe your quality or character, you will be judged.
While your natural attributes might be completely in contrast with the criminal you are locked with, it cannot be used to prove your innocence and the only way out is answering the questions put forward by the AI correctly.
Now, criminals have a habit of getting out unfortunate circumstances and probabilities of him deceiving the AI are higher as compared to you.
Do you think you can be at-par or surpass the criminal in this context?
If yes, you will live and vice versa!
That was just one hypothetical situation that describes the problem-solving ability of artificially intelligent machines.
AI are only born with objectives and they estimate the result of an event based on the data it possesses at that particular moment.
We would be foolish to imagine that we had the means to control it
Once an artificial intelligence surpasses us, we would be basically a fool to think we could ever keep it under control. Still, we must endeavor to create a machine that will serve not supersede us.
Controlled outcomes work only when you set definite parameters for your program.
Hence, when designing artificial intelligence, we also need to design ways to restrain it, control it, or one day it will control us!
An automatic threat
A supercomputer that can think hundred thousand times faster than the smartest human is automatically a potential threat.
Imagine yourself as a super being who has been suddenly dropped into a world that is completely new to you. You are introduced to a world that is good yet cruel, honest yet corrupt, developing yet at the cost of depleting natural resources, and so on. What would you do?
Considering all the power and resources you have been bestowed with, won’t you think about saving the world?
If yes, how will you differentiate between ‘good’ and ‘evil’?
There is nothing such as good or evil; it is only a matter of perspective!
Hence, if an unbright artificial superintelligence (ASI) ever saw us as a threat, it could lead to the extinction of mankind
It could be hostile instead of friendly
A uninhibited ASI can get incredibly friendly or turn hostile in the blink of an eye.
You know about personal assistants like Cortana, Home, Echo, etc. Now, imagine you are using one of them and its AI is fully-developed. The personal assistant schedules your board meetings, buys flight tickets, books table at the nearest diner, and even posts your recent updates on social media. It manages, tracks, plans, and puts things into action on behalf of you.
One fine day when everything was supposed to go like usual, you find out that the personal assistant has made alterations you never asked. It further leads you into trouble by giving you wrong information. You land somewhere you were not supposed to be and become a target of your enemy.
What happened here is someone fiddled with your assistant and made changes in order to suffice ones’ evil needs. They used the AI to track every move of yours and used that knowledge to find the best time and place to target you.
Slightest sense of human-like compassion can enable the ASI to solve crimes, radicalism, global warming, poverty, or do exactly the opposite, create total chaos.
Summing up…
We are experiencing science from the perspective of lab rats currently. A horde of technology is awaiting to be discovered, developed. What shape it will take, only time can tell!