Why We Must Not be Afraid of Artificial Intelligence


05/21/2015

Artificial Intelligence is perhaps the most important technologies that we develop in this decade. This is a great opportunity for humanity, rather than a threat. What is AI? Peter Diamandis, chairman of the Foundation of the notorious X-Prize shared his opinion.



Broadly AI is a computer's ability to understand your question, answer by looking in its vast memory banks and give the most accurate answer. This is computer's ability to handle a huge amount of information for you to make a decision and recommend you to perform certain actions. The first versions of AI known to mainstream consumers - is Siri on the iPhone or Watson supercomputer from IBM.

Watson became popular back in 2011, when he won the show 'Jeopardy!', and is now helping doctors treat patients with cancer, processing massive amounts of clinical data and wading through the thousands of individual cases to medical recommendations.

Apple's Siri is hiding in the palm of your hand (or pocket), pointing the way, making recommendations and giving jokes from time to time on the brink of a foul. But this is the first, the "weak" version of AI. What will the next decade, there will be more similar to JARVIS from the movie "Iron Man." However, these technologies will be accessible not only to Tony Stark.

Today search engine Google allows the teenager with a smartphone in Mumbai and billionaire in Manhattan to receive the same access to the global information. In the future, AI democratizes the ability of everyone to receive the same access to health care and commercial advice. AI will be your doctor, financial advisor, teacher for you and your children, fashion designer, chef, entrepreneur and so on.

And all of this will be almost free of charge, no matter who you are and where you live.

Ultimately AI dematerialize and democratize all these services, greatly improving the quality of life of 8 billion people, bringing us to a world of plenty.

First of all, we (people) always react badly to new technologies. Our built-in response to the evolution of new things that we do not understand – is the fear of the worst. Currently, this is dictated by the flow of gloomy fear of Hollywood films and bad news that keep us in fear of the future.

In the 1980s, when DNA restriction enzymes were discovered, have made possible genetic engineering, the fear lighteners alerted the world about the emergence of the destructive forms of genetically modified viruses, and mutated forms of life. But we got the miracle cures and extraordinary increase in food production.

Then, biologists, doctors, and even lawyers gathered at Conference on Recombinant DNA, to discuss the potential threat of biological and biotechnology settlement and to create voluntary guidelines that would ensure the safety of recombinant DNA technology.

These guidelines allow security researchers to move forward and continue to bring innovations, which we have used for already 30 years.

The cloning of Dolly the sheep in 1997 led to prophesy that in a few years we will have an army of cloned super-soldiers, parents will be implanting Einstein gene in their unborn children, and in the backyard, piles of zombies used for replacement organs will lie.

As far as we know, none of this came to pass.

We must understand that the powerful AI (as opposed to a focused weak AI) - is another matter. Perhaps this is the most important and deep technology that humanity can ever develop. Ray Kurzweil, one of the apologists of a happy future with artificial intelligence, believes that the benefits outweigh the risks and dangers.

- The main reason why I think that the AI ​​will be useful, is decentralization and its wide distribution.
He will be in the hands of one person or organization, and in the hands of billions, spreading as we move into the future. We're going to strengthen themselves through AI. The world will become exponentially peace-loving. ".