(Drivebycuriosity) - Elon Musk is afraid of Artificial Intelligence - and so are many others. The Tesla CEO - and many others - signed a dramatical letter demanding “Pause Giant AI Experiments” (futureoflife ). The underwriters claim that AI would overtake the earth and destroy society.
I think the claim is ridiculous and the demanded pause would be a serious mistake:
1. The underwriters are just the newest incarnation of the Luddites who have been fighting against technological progress for centuries.
AI is based on mathematics & logic. It behaves rational. In a world where is so much irrationality - especially in politics - more rationality would be a huge gain.
Humans often act irrational, driven by emotions, egos and believes. Irrational humans kill others because they don`t share their beliefs. Humans perform suicide bombing and burn skyscrapers down - out of religious belief. AI won´t.
The leaders of America, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and many other countries do not behave intelligent, quite the opposite. It seems we are moving in direction of WW III. AI - because acting rational - would reduce the risk of a nuclear war or even prevent it.
2. AI does not have an ego. Wars usually were driven by the ego of a too powerful person. Alexander The Great, William the Conqueror, Napoleon, Hitler, Putin and many others conquered other countries driven by their ego.
The bloody battle of Stalingrad was caused by egos. Hitler wanted to take the city which was named after his opponent, Stalin needed to defend "his city" by all means. There might be similar battle of the Crimea, caused by the inflated egos of Putin and Zelenskyy. Nobody seems to want to give in - whatever the lives of others it may cost.
3. Pausing AI would lead to enormous regulations and would throw a wrench into scientific progress. It would cost peoples lives because the pause would prevent possible near term gains in biotech (new vaccines, cancer treatment, Alzheimer prevention and so on) and so delay possible treatments for years. The pause would slow down technologies which are needed in the struggle against climate change (nuclear, solar power, energy saving etc).
4. People who work with AI are getting much more efficient and more productive. AI makes it possible to create many more products & services even with a constrained labor force and ageing population. The pause would slow down future economic growth considerably and reduce possible living standards in the near future.
4. The pause would give others a huge advantage: China, Russia, Iran, India, North Korea. Those countries - and others - could use AI to overtake the US very fast in technology, science, health care, livings standards and more.
Beware of the Luddites!
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