Dangers of Artificial Intelligence

Stephen Hawking once said that “the development of full AI could spell the end of the human race”. Many inventors and visionaries keep expressing their concerns about the dangers of artificial intelligence. From the invention of a language by Facebook’s AI to Sophia’s threat, it is obvious that artificial intelligence is dangerous. Furthermore, some dangers of ai are subtle yet very peculiar.

General Perception about AI : Dangers of artificial intelligence

People have Some misinterpretation when it comes to the dangers of ai. Most of us think that AI will disobey humans and destroy us. Moreover, people believe that it might even control us. We should give the credits for this mentality to sci-fi movies and novels. However, this premonition about the dangers of artificial intelligence is only partially true.

Janelle Shane explains the problem with an innovative example. AI can detect humans, but it doesn’t know what a human is. As of now, AI can identify humans just from physical appearance. Even if you place a dummy, it’ll label it as a man. Yes, artificial intelligence is dangerous, but not to a large extent. Well, it holds at least in the present day scenario.

So, What Can be the Danger?

The main dangers of artificial intelligence is that it does exactly what we want. For instance, let us take an example of navigating from point ‘A’ to ‘B’. AI algorithms compel it to find the shortest path. Sure it’ll navigate successfully, but it might neglect other factors. In this case, they may be going in a one-way path or rolling over obstacles instead of dodging them.

Now, imagine this tendency in other major domains. If we instruct the AI to eliminate a threat, it might kill humans if they meet its criteria of threats. Although AI does its job efficiently, it is not what we want. In this way, uncontrolled artificial intelligence is dangerous for mankind. However, we can minimize these threats by setting constraints.

Will AI become our Master?

This is a very ambiguous question when it comes to counting the dangers of artificial intelligence. Furthermore, movies like ‘Terminator’ and ‘The Matrix’ compel us to think about it. According to current scenarios, this is not possible. Advancements in present day AI are not ‘very’ disastrous.

Besides, you might be aware of the fact that AI can’t really differentiate between humans and other entities. The concepts of ‘master’, ‘slave’ or ‘world dominance’ are irrelevant in this context. AI follows human instructions. It tries to optimize the path towards the end goal. Furthermore, the chances of errors lie in the way we program the AI.

Coming to the question, tycoons such as Janelle Shane assert that AI cannot become our master. Well, unless we program it in a way which drives it to eradicate the human race. Artificial intelligence adheres to the final goal. Unless we develop an AI with maleficent intent, we are safe.

Our Takeaway

No matter what people say about the dangers of artificial intelligence, there’s nothing to worry about. This technology is still the very beginning stage. Although we don’t deny the possibility of “world dominance”, it is highly unlikely to happen. In the present day, the prominent dangers of artificial intelligence is optimization without regulations. Furthermore, unlike movies we don’t need to worry about its dangers. We can still control AI and use it for the best.