The Atlantic recently published an article entitled, “The Consequences of Machine Intelligence,” which unearthed reasons why keeping tabs on the effects of machine intelligence, an arm of AI, is crucial to our survival as a species. While this type of alarmism is important to ponder, it is also the stuff science fiction novels are made of, (and not going to lie, we love indulging in it). But will machine intelligence ever be an actual threat?
Twelve years ago, Bill Joy, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, penned an infamous Wired article where he stated that, “Our most powerful 21st-century technologies — robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech — are threatening to make humans an endangered species.” What Joy outlined is nothing new. Technology has been making people “endangered” by replacing human jobs since the dawn of time. But the jobs that are vaporized are those that are either boring, repetitive, or too dangerous for humans to do. Furthermore, most workers are eventually re-employed elsewhere. Isn’t this the kind of progress in human employment and technology we want to promote? Yes, we have our Roomba vacuum cleaners and self-parking cars, but we don’t have machines with human traits like creativity and intuition, essential in making the hard decisions needed to conduct intelligent work. Will that type of machine intelligence ever exist? And if it did, what would we do to pass the days?
In 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes wrote that technological progress would eventually eliminate our need to work in order to live. Keynes imagined that by 2030, our world would be so wealthy and technically capable, that leisure activities would occupy the majority of our days rather than work. Do you think machine intelligence is pushing Keynes’ futuristic society into a reality? Tell us what you think in the comments section below.
(Source: vintagechromes.blogspot.com)
