This is ENIAC, one of the earliest examples
of general purpose computers and artificial intelligence.
In 1945, the US military used it
to gain power in the arms race.
The computer could calculate
up to 5,000 additions per second
and was tasked with building a more powerful nuclear weapon.
And it did.
ENIAC accelerated the birth of the first hydrogen bomb.
Fast-forward to today: AI has exploded.
It helps you navigate your daily commute
and run apps you didn't even know you needed.
But it's also being used by governments
to track citizens without public oversight.
AI is transforming the way we live,
but we have to ask ourselves, is it worth the risk?
In 2017, 82% of global wealth generated
went to the top 1% of the population.
And the rapid rise of AI
could make this inequality even worse.
AI could fundamentally change socioeconomic class structure.
According to AI expert Kai-Fu Lee,
within the next 15 to 25 years,
an estimated 40% of jobs could be automated,
putting up to 800 million people out of work
and concentrating wealth even more
in the hands of a very few.
Without finding a solution to this,
the world faces a scenario
where people with skills replaced by AI
are no longer employable.
One possible solution
is paying people a universal basic income
to make up for their lost wages,
but that still won't solve the problem
of the widening wealth gap.
Right now, the AI we interact with on a daily basis
is known as weak AI.
It provides specialized tools to perform difficult tasks
faster and better than we can.
But it is neither self-aware nor self-assigning.
The AI of the future is sometimes called strong AI.
These are machines that could think, improve, adapt
and deploy on their own.
And beyond strong AI is the realm
of superintelligent AI,
which exceeds humans in pretty much every way.
This approaches a milestone known as the singularity,
when machines completely outpace us
and slip free of human control.
But even if we never advance this far,
today's AI still has vast implications for humanity,
especially when it comes to wealth and power.
Here's how wealth is distributed right now:
40% of the population contributes 5% to global income,
and just 42 people in the top 1% have as much wealth
as 3.7 billion of the poorest.
Advances in technology could make this divide even worse.
Some AI experts predict that by 2029,
brain-machine interfaces
could connect humans to computer knowledge
at the speed of thought,
giving those who can afford it
telepathy with artificial intelligence,
and that would create more inequality.
If you think this sounds like science fiction,
Facebook is already working on optically scanning your brain
so you can type with only the little voice in your head.
AI is already being used
to monitor and manipulate populations.
Surveillance systems exist all over the world,
and the Chinese government, for example,
has taken it to a whole new level.
Some workers are forced to wear brainwave-reading hats.
Facial recognition technology is used
to track and monitor the emotions of school children,
and China has set up a social credit system
that rewards and punishes citizens
by monitoring their social behavior.
The system ranks citizens against one another.
Low credit scores result in punishment.
This creates good citizens and bad citizens
in a society controlled by what is effectively
a police-tech state.
China and other global powers are already weaponizing AI
as countries compete for military and economic power.
Russia has begun building its robot army,
South Korea has long-range AI machine guns,
and the US has funded AI weapons
through its own program, DARPA.
If we don't regulate the use of AI,
other countries might follow that lead.
Human rights are at risk, poverty could rise globally,
and the division of power and wealth could be exacerbated.
But AI also has the power to end world poverty,
reduce food scarcity, solve the housing crisis,
cure diseases, end road fatalities,
and improve climate science.
AI has the power to do good, it has the power to do bad.
The question is, how do we harness and manage that power?