Yes yes, it’s easy to laugh at a clickbait article but there is more than a grain of truth to it. Unfortunately it’s a complicated issue to grasp and therefore to debate but if people like Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking say that AI is potentially dangerous I believe there’s something to it.
According to Musk “AI is the biggest risk we face as a civilisation”.
It won’t be robot armies, it’ll be the unethical application of algorithms.
Good point. Look at the last elections in the US & Brexit.
Those results were fuelled by clever use of intelligent data. People are easily manipulated and if it gets / stays in the wrong hands we are all in trouble.
If you look at Trump. He secured power based on the back of a wave of dissatisfaction with inequality and a ruling elite. Unfortunately, his policies will only exacerbate the situation so a few years down the road there could be a more extreme populist leader who does more damage to the stability of the world than old Daffy Trump and gets on the back of doing what DT said he was going to do.
I think this worst-case-scenario is quite likely somewhere in the world, if we look at the rise of populist politics in the UK with Brexit and across Europe. Sure Macron managed to hold off Le Pen but one swallow doesn’t make a summer.
As AI increases increasing numbers of jobs will be automated. This will include everything: Journalism, Lawyers, Drivers, Checkout Assistants, Delivering, Driving etc pretty much everything you can think of will either be automated or made much quicker and easier with the use of advanced robotic tools and will therefore require less people to do the job. This of course as the population is rising and international competition increasing.
Of course the governments of the world could come together and define a sensible, innovation-friendly, framework for global taxation, retraining and something along the lines of UBI (Universal Basic Income)… but then pigs might fly too. 🙁
At worst, this could be very bad. I would say that we are on the verge of a technological global warming style crisis. We can redirect it but I have seen very little momentum to try and I worry that it will be too late when we do wake up sufficiently. The voices that are shouting about this do not attract the interest in the way that the populists: Johnson, Corbyn, Trump et al do.
I think this will result in fewer winners than there are now with a few global businesses increasingly taking over and growing exponentially. As they become more global, it becomes harder for governments to legislate and guide them too.
If we are looking for parallels, I would consider the Industrial Revolution. sure we are sitting pretty now but for 80 – 100 years afterwards things got a lot worse for working people.
but on the bright side…. we will all have time to bake more cake – Yay 😀
