From a professor of computer science at UC Berkeley: “The arrival of superhuman machine intelligence will be the biggest event in human history.” The NY Times article was titled “How to Stop Superhuman AI Before It Stops Us”. Interesting conjecture, but is such a happening truly possible, and if so, at all likely? There is at least one very good reason why not.
Is your facial image stored somewhere on the web? Today, for virtually all of us, the answer likely is yes. This means that our facial images are available, probably not for good purposes, to be used in creating deepfakes. Another application of AI, which I did not know about until very recently. This is something we all need to know about.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is showing up everywhere today. Not much seems truly intelligent despite the hype. What defines real AI? Certainly not just an ability to generate conversations and chats within the narrow confines of its data and rules. Is Open AI’s ChatGPT intelligent by any practical definition, or simply just another, more powerful chatbot? How can we identify intelligence in practice?
According to Google engineer Blake Lemoine, an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot application called LaMDA, short for Language Model for Dialogue Applications, has achieved sentience, or independent self-aware consciousness. Is this good or bad? And just what is “self-awareness”? Can non-humans – animals, and even LaMDA – be self-aware? Where might such questions be taking us?
The short answer: No, but a qualified “no”. The right answer is that automation and AI will obsolete much of our current skills and knowledge, forcing us to reinvent or upgrade ourselves. Just like has been happening nearly forever. Should we not be worried then? Yes – but only about the huge changes being driven by automation and AI.
