What If AI Robots Turn Against Humans and Outsmart Us? It could be disastrous
Robots are already navigating battlefields, and drones may soon be delivering Amazon packages to our doorsteps. Siri can solve complicated equations.
But all of these advances depend on a user giving the A.I. direction.
James Barrat, an author and documentary filmmaker, forecasts in his new book, Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era.
Before long, Barrat says, artificial intelligence—from Siri to drones and data mining systems—will stop looking to humans for upgrades and start seeking improvements on their own. The A.I. of our future won’t necessarily be friendly, he says: they could actually be what destroy us.
In this century, scientists will create machines with intelligence that equals and then surpasses our own. But before we share the planet with super-intelligent machines, we must develop a science for understanding them. Otherwise, they’ll take control. And no, this isn’t science fiction. Scientists have already created machines that are better than humans at chess, Jeopardy!, navigation, data mining, search, theorem proving and countless other tasks. Eventually, machines will be created that are better than humans at A.I. research.
At that point, they will be able to improve their own capabilities very quickly. These self-improving machines will pursue the goals they’re created with, whether they be space exploration, playing chess or picking stocks. To succeed they’ll seek and expend resources, be it energy or money. They’ll seek to avoid the failure modes, like being switched off or unplugged. In short, they’ll develop drives, including self-protection and resource acquisition—drives much like our own. They won’t hesitate to beg, borrow, steal and worse to get what they need.
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