Hawking: Artificial Intelligence Could End Mankind

By R. Siva Kumar - 15 Jun '15 21:47PM

Artificial Intelligence has always been a point of wonder for the human race. Do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages? It's a matter of concern, according to ksl.

It was at a symposium that celebrated the centennial anniversary of the MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics Department in October 2014 that the point was discussed. Elon Musk, SpaceX and Tesla founder, was grilled by the audience and expressed some "grave concerns," about AI when he was asked by the audience.

He said that AI research is like "summoning the demon. You know all those stories where there's the guy with the pentagram and the holy water and he's like... yeah, he's sure he can control the demon, [but] it doesn't work out."

Eminent physicist Stephen Hawking told the BBC two months later, that he sees nothing wrong about the "soft" or basic AIs that can fulfill some simple actions, such as "refilling a prescription, making a cable-TV-service appointment, canceling an airline reservation or obeying the voice from the GPS."

The AI inventions is "equal to or surpasses the human brain," but his issue is more with the AI that becomes superior to the human brain. "It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate," he said.

Echoing him later on Reddit, Bill Gates said: "I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence. First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage it well," according to express. "A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern. I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don't understand why some people are not concerned."

Peter Diamandis, chairman and CEO of XPRIZE, disagreed in his article for the Huffington Post titled "Why I Don't Fear Artificial Intelligence." He sees great benefits from AI research.

"In the future, AI will democratize the ability for everyone to have equal access to services ranging from healthcare to finance advice," he wrote. Pointing out that it will level the playing field, he added: "Our default, evolutionary response to new things that we don't understand is to fear the worst."