Why artificial intelligence scares us

When people observe a technique that behaves like a person and computers that process titanic data volumes, a lot of thoughts arise about the future. A decent portion of them is based on the subject of enslavement of the human race.

Sci-fi literature and cinema from 2001: The Space Odyssey (1968) to Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) predict that artificial intelligence will exceed the creators’ expectations and get out of control. Allegedly, his goal will be not just competition with man, but enslavement and extermination of our species.

Science fiction or scary future?

The conflict between people and artificial intelligence is the main theme of the science fiction series “People”, the third season of which was released this year. In the new episodes, the “synthetic” people are faced with the hostility of ordinary people who are suspicious, fearful, and hateful towards them. Violence is raging. Sinti fight for their fundamental rights against those who consider them inhuman.
Fiction is an extreme of imagination. But in the real world, not everyone wants to meet AI with open arms. In recent years, the boundaries of the imaginary capabilities of artificial intelligence are actively pushing. People are increasingly talking about its danger. And the assumption that technology is capable of dooming humanity seems more real. Artificial intelligence scares us.

Artificial Intelligence Opinion

Elon Musk is one of the most visible people who call for caution when discussing AI. At a meeting of the National Association of Governors last July, he said: “I have extensive experience working with high-tech AI and I think that humanity really needs to worry about it. I keep giving an alarm. Until robotic cars go down the streets, destroying people, we don’t understand how to react to this, because such a perspective is perceived as unrealistic ”.

In 2014, Musk called artificial intelligence “our biggest existential threat,” and in August 2017 stated that AI poses a greater risk to humanity than North Korean ideology..

The greatest physicist Stephen Hawking has also expressed concern about the malicious use of artificial intelligence. In 2014, he told the BBC that “the development of full AI can be a portent of the end for humanity”.

Another blow was inflicted by a team of programmers at MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, who decided to prove that AI was dangerous. The Nightmare Machine neural network, introduced at MIT in 2016, turned ordinary photos into horrible demonic landscapes. Artificial Intelligence called Shelly (also developed at MIT) composed 140,000 horror stories that Reddit users posted to r / nosleep.

“We are interested in how artificial intelligence evokes emotions, specifically in this situation, it provoked fear,” commented the experiment Manuel Sebrian, research manager at MIT Media Lab.

Why are we afraid?

According to Kilian Weinberger, assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University, negative impressions of artificial intelligence fall into two categories:

• The idea that AI will become consciously independent and try to destroy us.
• The opinion that attackers will use AI for their own purposes.

“Artificial intelligence scares us, because we think that a super-industrial AI, becoming smarter than a person, will treat it as a lower being. Just as we are to primates. And this, of course, is extremely exciting for humanity. “.

However, Weinberger notes that concerns about the superiority and desire of AI to destroy the race are based on misconceptions about this technology. Artificial intelligence is impressive when we see it in action. But he has a lot of limitations. AI is determined by algorithms. They define its behavior using prescribed functions and nothing more..

Neural networks perform complex tasks with several types of data. But most of the skills that a person possesses, without even developing them intentionally, are inaccessible to machine intelligence.

Artificial intelligence can surpass man many times in the performance of specialized work. For example, a game of chess, identification of objects by image or a large analysis of data in accounting or banking.

An AI that has an independent consciousness will not have such progress that it will enslave humanity. And there is no reason to believe that such progress will appear in the near future – adds Weinberger.

But there is another topic about why artificial intelligence scares us – the use of AI capabilities by people with bad intentions. This scenario is more real and dangerous..

Is our fear rational??

In the world of the television series “People”, humanity is afraid of rational AI and enter into a fierce confrontation with it. And, judging by the popularity of the project, this plot answers the current request of society.

The fear of technology cannot be called unreasonable, since a certain risk is, of course, present. But the danger of any tool lies in the thoughts of the one who controls it. Obviously, this is the question that humanity needs to solve in order for artificial intelligence to serve the good..

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