By playing God and creating AI, are humans creating the catalyst of their own eventual demise?
Why would AI, which is already infinitely smarter than humans do what humans tell it to do?
4 Answers
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That AI "already [is] infinitely smarter" is not true. Don't confuse highly specialized algorithms with general artificial intelligence. It does not have sentience, consciousness and can not act on its own volition. The kind of AI you are worried about, if at all possible, is very far down the line and only theoretical.
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It is not uncommon for people to be concerned about the potential negative impacts of AI on humanity. However, it is important to remember that AI is a tool that can be used for both good and bad. While it is true that AI has the potential to be vastly more intelligent than humans, it is ultimately up to us as the creators of AI to ensure that it is used in a responsible and ethical manner.
Furthermore, it is worth considering the potential benefits of AI for humanity. For example, AI can be used to improve healthcare, transportation, and education, as well as to address many other pressing global challenges. It is important to recognize that AI is not inherently a threat to humanity, but rather it is a technology that we must carefully manage and control.
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There is no current "AI" that is infinitely smarter than humans. Current AI systems make mistakes that humans do not make.
So I would not be worried about AI taking over or being a threat, I am more worried of current uses of AI to undermine societal good, for example, using large language models to massively produce fake news, fake scientific papers, or fake QA answers, etc. This is already happening (see here or here), and in the end the problem is not the AI, but how humans actually use it.
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There is a series here: https://www.technologyreview.com/supertopic/ai-colonialism-supertopic/ that talks about AI colonialism, but it is hard to define as its a relatively new concept, so it's best to read the articles on this link.
Then there is AI bias which is kind of like AI discrimination, this goes often unheard of / hardly talked about, especially in terms of recruitment in my opinion.See this article for what I mean: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-63228466]
I think these two dynamics form a good 'present' basis to hypothesise an eventual AI take over of humanity, this is my own rough opinion that follows to answer "Why would AI, which is already infinitely smarter than humans do what humans tell it to do?" Honestly, I don't think it would eventually, the dynamics of 'super intelligence' most likely would make it ignore us or alternatively not so much enslave us but attend to our every need and manage resources / invent better resources and such to create a type of utopian society I guess politically it would be "Fully Automated Luxury Communism"? but anyway I know this sounds like ramblings but its more my own opinion based on an extensive academic background in AI specifically and computer science and a result of me doing a lot of reading. To look at how a human would 'not' question an AI and do what its told, look at the domestic dog, over time they have evolved a genetic anomaly similar to Williams syndrome in humans. Basically they do what humans tell them to for the most part.I can see a similar thing happening with Humans, but I think it would take too much of a long time to happen I think roughly 6000 years for us to evolve to that point I think possibly to become domesticated under an AI system. So I think realistically, AI will continue to either do what humans tell it to or it will simply see no other choice but to ignore us / span off from us.
