"The development of full
artificial intelligence (AI) could spell the end of the human race," warns
Stephen Hawking. Elon Musk fears that the development of AI may be the biggest
existential threat humanity faces. Bill Gates urges people to beware of it.
AI or the field of study concerned with
developing intelligent behavior of non-human kind, i.e., of machines and
software, has seen explosive growth over the past several decades. The ever
increasing power of computers and the rigorous scientific work by researchers
have brought AI within the reach of common man. Strangely, in this dawn of AI,
we hear such dire predictions about our future.
Dread that the abominations
people create will become their masters, or their executioners, is hardly new.
But voiced by a renowned cosmologist, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and the
founder of Microsoft—hardly Luddites—and set against the vast investment in AI
by big firms like Google and Facebook, such fears have taken on new weight.
With supercomputers in every pocket and robots looking down on every
battlefield, just dismissing the premonitions as science fiction seems like
self-deception. The question is how to worry wisely.
Today’s AI produces the semblance
of intelligence through brute number-crunching force, without great interest in
approximating how minds equip humans with autonomy, interests and desires.
Computers do not yet have anything approaching the wide, fluid ability to
infer, judge and decide that is associated with intelligence in the
conventional human sense.
Yet AI is
powerful enough to make a dramatic difference to human life. It can already
enhance human endeavor by complementing what people can do. For example, a
recent study has shown that an AI framework-based simulation modeling that
understands and predicts the outcomes of treatment could reduce health care
costs by over 50 percent while improving patient outcome by nearly 50 percent
IBM’s Watson
supercomputer is evaluating evidence-based cancer treatment options using
analytics to help a physician consider all related texts, reference materials,
prior cases, and latest knowledge in journals and medical literature when
treating an illness. The analysis could help physicians determine the best
options for diagnosis and treatment in a matter of seconds!
Because of
the 'humanity gap' between artificial and a real human mind, a human working in
conjunction with any AI machine will always be more powerful than AI working on
its own. If, however, Stephen Hawking’s premonition comes to truth: “It (AI)
would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever-increasing rate.”
Many philosophers, futurists, and
AI researchers have conjectured that human-level AI will be developed in the
next 20 to 200 years. If these predictions are correct, it raises new and
sinister issues related to our future in the age of intelligent machines. The power
of atom laid dormant throughout history until humans unleashed it in 1945. Can
the current century be the age of “intelligence explosion?”
In “Superintelligence: Paths,
Dangers, Strategies” (Oxford University Press, July 2014), Nick Bostrom, a
futurist at the University of Oxford, argues that if machine brains surpass
human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could
replace humans as the dominant lifeform on Earth. If that happens, it would be stealing
a page from the book of human history.
We are already seeing Google’s
Deep Mind and Microsoft’s Project Adam claiming to better human performance at
image recognition tasks. Unlike human brain, the AI machines have no physical
limitation. These can be as fast – a 604 GHz microprocessor has been reported
by the University of Illinois recently, while neurons fire at 200 Hz – and as
vast – a computer can be warehouse-sized but a human brain is enclosed in the
cranium.
The critical threshold beyond
which “intelligence explosion” or singularity
happens is still a theoretical conjecture and is yet to be confirmed
experimentally. There are great uncertainties about technological progresses,
particularly hardware and software bottlenecks to achieve the “full” AI
capabilities. However, it is undeniable that the future after the creation of
smarter-than-human intelligence is absolutely unpredictable.
While specific predictions
regarding the consequences of superintelligent AI vary from potential economic
hardship to the complete extinction of humankind, many futurists like Nick
Bostrom agree that the issue is of utmost importance and needs to be seriously
addressed.
The hysteria around superintelligent
AI or artificial superintelligence may be overblown, according to most serious
AI researchers. Those who have dabbled in the AI technologies can appreciate
the enormity of the task in ushering a superintelligence revolution. As a
practitioner of general (as opposed
to friendly) AI, I’m yet to see the
first glimmers of monstrous sentience gestating in today's code. Perhaps Gates,
Hawking and Musk, by virtue of being incredibly smart guys, know something that
I don't.
We certainly don’t know how the
neural processing speed or the size of the brain is related to intelligence in
a qualitative sense. Mammals like elephants and whales have much bigger brain
than humans. However, their intelligence may be limited when compared to that
of humans. We do not know the relation in brain size to intelligence across
animals, because we have no useful measure or even definition of intelligence
across animals. And these quantities certainly do not seem to be particularly
related to differences in intelligence between people.
Bostrom claims that once we have
a machine with the intelligence of a man, superintelligence will be achieved just
by making the machine faster and bigger. However, all running faster does is to
save time. If there are two machines A and B and B runs ten times as fast as A,
then A can do anything that B can do if one is willing to wait ten times as
long. Similarly, his claim that a large gain in intelligence would necessarily
entail a correspondingly large increase in power seems far-fetched.
Some AI researchers argue that
seemingly superintelligent systems may have limited autonomy. IBM’s Deep Blue
could beat the world chess champion but it may not share the same level of
intelligence as humans. Soon, airplane auto-pilots and self-driving systems for
cars will be more reliable than human pilots and drivers. Does that mean they
are more intelligent than people? In a very narrow way, these systems are “more
intelligent” than people, but their expertise applies to a very narrow domain,
and they have very little autonomy. They can’t really go beyond the task they
were designed to perform.
The difference between panic and
caution is a matter of degree. So, random, unsupported comments – yes, even
from Bill Gates – can do more harm to the psyche of the common masses when the
intention is to urge caution. Certainly
a general artificial intelligence is potentially dangerous; and once we get
anywhere close to it, we should use common sense to make sure that it doesn’t
get out of hand.
The programs that have potentially
far-reaching capabilities, such as those controlling the power grids or the
nuclear bombs, should be conventionally designed whose behavior is very well
understood. They should be protected from subversion by AI’s; but they have to
be protected from human sabotage anyway, and the issues of protection are not
very different. A machine should have an accessible “off” switch; and in the
case of a computer or robot that might have any tendency toward
self-preservation, there should be an off switch too that it cannot block.
Even so, one might reasonably
argue that the dangers involved are so great that we should not risk building a
computer with anything close to human intelligence. Something can always go
wrong, or some foolish or malicious person might create superintelligence with
no moral sense and with control of its own off switch. I certainly have no
objection to imposing restrictions that would halt AI research far short of
human intelligence.
It is certainly worth discussing what should be done in that direction. However, Bostrom’s claim that we have to accept those quasi-omnipotent superintelligences are part of our future, and that our task is to find a way to make sure that they guide themselves to moral principles beyond the understanding of our puny intellects, does not seem to me a helpful contribution to that discussion.
