I am fascinated by chatGPT, DALL E, Bing image creator (which uses DALL E) and other AI-enabled tools. So, today let us discuss AI.
Bill Gates is a tech visionary. So, when he writes on AI, we ought to sit up and take notice. This is one article I would suggest you read fully to grasp the future possibilities.
The development of AI is as fundamental as the creation of the microprocessor, the personal computer, the Internet, and the mobile phone. It will change the way people work, learn, travel, get health care, and communicate with each other. Entire industries will reorient around it. Businesses will distinguish themselves by how well they use it.
Technically, the term artificial intelligence refers to a model created to solve a specific problem or provide a particular service. What is powering things like ChatGPT is artificial intelligence. It is learning how to do chat better but can’t learn other tasks. By contrast, the term artificial general intelligence refers to software that’s capable of learning any task or subject. AGI doesn’t exist yet—there is a robust debate going on in the computing industry about how to create it, and whether it can even be created at all.
Developing AI and AGI has been the great dream of the computing industry. For decades, the question was when computers would be better than humans at something other than making calculations. Now, with the arrival of machine learning and large amounts of computing power, sophisticated AIs are a reality and they will get better very fast.
Like with all new revolutionary changes, AI also has its detractors. Here is a counterview on why AI should be stopped. Permanently.
The most likely outcome is AI that does not do what we want, and does not care for us nor for sentient life in general. That kind of caring is something that could in principle be imbued into an AI but we are not ready and do not currently know how.
Absent that caring, we get “the AI does not love you, nor does it hate you, and you are made of atoms it can use for something else.”
The likely result of humanity facing down an opposed superhuman intelligence is a total loss. Valid metaphors include “a 10-year-old trying to play chess against Stockfish 15”, “the 11th century trying to fight the 21st century,” and “Australopithecus trying to fight Homo sapiens“.
Another important and probably more pressing challenge is that deepfakes using AI are going to get better and better so much so that it may be difficult to distinguish between the real and the fake. Already scammers are using AI to dupe people.
Thought of the Week
No amount of intelligence can counteract the influence of extremely strong beliefs.
~Anonymous
If you are wedded to a particular belief it is practically impossible to find contrary evidence. Your mind will only focus on ideas and data confirming the belief. You can see this readily in people with strong political beliefs.