Why are we scared of Artificial Intelligence?

Cogito ergo sum?

On the 12th of March 2016, a Go competition final made the headlines: Google’s Artificial Intelligence named “AlphaGo” beat the world champion, the South Korean Lee Sedol. The AI won in this extremely complex game, a performance that was not expected by the specialists before at least a decade. This event illustrates the constant improving of Artificial Intelligence and brought up the question of its potential and its possible dangers…

AI is already used in the economy to maximize benefits, but also in speech recognition like Sisi, the famous voice on Apple devices. It also used in connected objects including the well-known Google car that drives itself. According to an article in The Economist in March 2012: “Last year, companies spent $8.5 billion on deals and investments in artificial intelligence” in Silicon Valley. That is four times more than in 2010. It shows that the sector is in strong expansion, whatever the likely drawbacks.

And who is creating AI? Multinational companies like Google and Microsoft. Is that reassuring? Luckily, according to John Markoff in a New York Times article from September 2016: “… five of the world’s largest technology companies are trying to create a common ethic around the creation of Artificial Intelligence.” He adds that the basic intention is: “… to ensure that AI research is focused on benefiting people, not hurting them.” Reassuring news?

There are reasons to be scared of the rise of AI. Would you use a Google car on the highway? Stuart Russel, an AI specialist interviewed in an article from The Guardian in August 2016, takes this example: “Someone building a self-driving car might instruct it never to go through a red light, but the machine might then hack into the traffic light control system so that all the lights are changed to green.” Well, that is a clever solution but obviously not a good one. Another hypothetical risk was suggested by Yuval Nouh Harari, a celebrated historian and writer, in another article in The Guardian in May 2016 who writes that because its jobs would be done by an AI there would be the “… rise of a ‘useless’ class.” Today, there is high unemployment, so what will it be like tomorrow as a consequence of the use of AI? Moreover, public opinion fears the ‘singularity’, the point where AI would become more intelligent than us and would exterminate us because we would be “inferior beings.” What does Stuart Russel think about that? “The risk doesn’t come from machines suddenly developing spontaneous malevolent consciousness,” he writes.

So yes, there are risks with AI, but I think we should continue on the road to progress. After all, did we stop the progress of agricultural technology, the industrial revolution or internet because it was too risky? No, because we love creating new concepts and tools. My point is that despite our fear of the Machine, research will go on, with or without us.

As Tom Chatfield wrote in The Guardian in August 2016: “Who wouldn’t want an immaculate companion, employee, parent, or lover?” Everyone has to make up his own mind, but mine is clear: Artificial Intelligence has great potential for improving our lives.

Guillaume ANDRIEUX wants to become a famous film maker!