YES
NO
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64 YES
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James Barrat is a filmmaker, speaker and author of Our Final Invention:
Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era ( jamesbarrat.com).
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JULY 2015 The Costco Connection 23
we think about artificial intelligence (Ai), the
science of creating thinking machines, as just
another technological
endeavor. But Ai is much
more. it has the potential
to threaten us with intelligent weapons, take virtually all of our jobs and,
ultimately, cause our extinction.
Ai has kept us entertained with lots of fun,
useful gadgets, such as the apps that help us
navigate city streets, interact with virtual assistants like Siri and find answers on the web. But
Ai also enables researchers to create battlefield
robots and drones that can target and kill people
without a human in the decision loop. this isn’t
science fiction: terminator-like robots, and
drones, are being developed today by China,
Russia, israel, the U.k. and the U.S.
On the job front, things aren’t much better.
those self-driving cars you keep hearing about?
in a few years they’ll replace America’s 4 million
professional drivers. how will truckers, cabbies
and delivery people make a living once vehicles
drive themselves? Some 7 million Americans
perform data entry and operations tasks for
business. those jobs are on the chopping block
too, as automated systems perform them faster
and more cheaply.
Factory jobs may be coming back to
America, but guess what? they’ll go to robots as
a new wave of automation takes over farm and
factory work. And the middle class won’t be
spared either. A recent report from the
Massachusetts institute of technology predicts
smart machines will account for deep job cuts in
the areas of law, financial services, education
and medicine.
Autonomous assassins and massive unem-
ployment are scary consequences of Ai, but they
aren’t the worst. Right now, iBM, Google and
dozens of companies and governments are pur-
suing Ai’s holy grail: machines as smart as or
smarter than humans. in the next couple of
decades we may share the planet with comput-
ers millions of times more intelligent than we
are. the problem is we have no experience deal-
ing with anything that smart. we humans run
the planet not because we’re the fastest or stron-
gest animal, but because we’re the most intelli-
gent. when machine intelligence soars past
ours, who will be in charge? why do we assume
super-intelligent machines will be friendly?
nobel Prize–winning physicist Stephen
hawking has said that thinking machines pose
a threat to humans’ very existence.
if he worries about Ai, so should we. C
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Dr. Peter H. Diamandis is the Chairman and CEO of XPRIZE, a global
leader in prize competition for innovation ( xprize.org).
ARtiFiCiAl intelligence
(Ai) is the most powerful
technology we’re bringing
online over the next
decade, and it has massive
potential to benefit
humanity. in fact, today’s
versions of Ai (Siri,
Google, watson) have already revolutionized the
way we work, play and live.
Google, Facebook, Amazon and Uber, to
name a few, are companies powered by early
versions of artificial intelligence. Google
translate uses big data and machine learning to
translate among 90 different languages. Amazon
uses Ai to predict what we will desire. Facebook
and linkedin use Ai to predict which people we
will want to connect with online. every time we
search the internet or buy something online, Ai
is already at work in the background. it enables
computers to understand what we are really
looking for and provide us with the best answer.
iBM’s watson supercomputer made head-
lines in 2011 by winning Jeopardy!, and now it’s
helping doctors treat cancer patients by process-
ing massive amounts of clinical data and cross-
referencing thousands of individual cases and
medical outcomes. Apple’s Siri rests in the palm
of the hand, providing directions, making rec-
ommendations and even cracking jokes. And
that’s merely scratching the surface: in the near
future, Ai will be used as a primary physician
and financial adviser.
Ai will also become a personal teacher,
capable of bringing literacy to children and
adults around the world. today the $15 million
Global learning XPRiZe and the $7 million
Adult literacy XPRiZe are both tapping into Ai
as the means to give hundreds of millions of
people the tools to teach themselves basic read-
ing, writing and numeracy in a rapid and scal-
able fashion.
we humans have the tendency to imagine
the worst of technology, but ultimately we bring
out the best. thirty years ago, when scientists
first discovered the power of recombinant DnA,
we all imagined massive abuse and danger. the
reality is that voluntary guidelines have ensured
the safety of recombinant DnA technology and
massive benefits for feeding the planet and sav-
ing lives.
in short, humanity will ultimately collaborate and co-evolve with Ai. it will enable us to
fulfill our dreams and help create a world of
abundance for the 9 billion people who will
inhabit the planet by 2050. C
