What are the risks of artificial intelligence, and what should we be doing
about them? The idea of AI has been around for decades. But recent advances
have completely transformed what we can achieve with the technology. And as a
result, many experts believe we're teetering on the edge of an AI
revolution. This is fantastic news if you're struggling with really knotty
problems like how to cure incurable diseases, or solve world hunger, or even
design safer and faster ways of getting from A to B. Here, smart machines are
already paving the way to doing things which would have been impossible without
them. But there are downsides to creating machines that can think and act way
faster than humans; and often in ways that we don't fully understand. Because
of this, we need to be thinking now about what might possibly go wrong, so we can
avoid potentially disastrous mistakes in the future. Risk Bites we'll be diving
further into some of the possible risks of AI in later episodes. But to tee
things off, here are 10 things we should probably be thinking about now. One:
machines that make it harder to think for ourselves.
Of course, apps like Google and Alexa and Siri are already doing this to some
extent. But the more we rely on smart machines to do stuff for us, the more we
risk losing skills that we may one day regret. Two: machines that take away jobs.
This is a huge issue as smart machines begin to outperform smart people. The big
question is whether we can keep on inventing jobs that humans do better, or
if we need to consider a future without paid jobs. Three: machines that learn
from our worst habits. As we train smart machines, will they end up as opinionated,
biased, and anti-social, as some of their human trainers? The evidence so far is
that, unless we work hard on avoiding this, sadly they probably will.
Four: Machines that make decisions we don't understand.
Imagine failing a job interview, or flunking a class, or being fined; all
because a machine made a decision that no one could explain, but you had to live
with anyway. Scarily, were already on the slippery slope of giving smart machines
the authority to make such decisions without being accountable for them. Five:
Machines that don't understand what's important to people. Imagine an AI that
has the power to change your life, but it has its own ideas about what's important
and what's acceptable. This is great if you both agree; but it's a nightmare if
you don't. Six: Machines that kill people. Of course, machines kill people all the
time. But usually there's a person making the final decision. What happens though
when we replace that person with another machine? Seven: Machines that alter their
own instructions. Interestingly, we want machines that can think for themselves
when solving complex problems. But what if they get too smart? Eight: machines
that make smart-dumb decisions. We know that smart people can make
decisions that look really stupid with hindsight; especially when they can't
appreciate the full consequences of their actions. Sadly, from what we know of
complex systems, smart machines are likely to have exactly the same problem.
Nine: Machines that decide we're not needed! What if AIs get so smart that they
realize people are a waste of space? The good news is that were probably a long
way from super intelligent machines that are disdainful of mere human beings. But
it's worth thinking about, just in case. And finally ten: Machines that use our
human weaknesses to control us. What are the chances that we create machines that
are smart enough to understand our human foibles and use them against us? If we're
not careful, we won't be fearing our AI lords: we'll be worshipping them! Of course,
despite these and other risks, AI could make our lives amazingly better if it's
developed responsibly. But this won't happen if we don't think about the
possible downsides up-front. The good news is that AI developers and others are
already beginning to do this. But we're going to need a whole lot of input from
experts in many other areas, if the benefits of AI are to far outweigh the risks.