For probably the first and last time in my life, I feel Stephen Hawking is wrong about something scientific.
Stephen Hawking wrote a column for The Independent warning about the risks of people taking artificial intelligence (AI) going too far. The sentence that Dr. Hawking wrote that caught my eye as incorrect was, “..., there are no fundamental limits to what can be achieved: there is no physical law precluding particles from being organised [sic] in ways that perform even more advanced computations than the arrangements of particles in human brains.”
This is not correct, while computers are fast and can do calculations faster than man, AI is boiled down predictions based on statistics and classification algorithms. While good predictions are right most of the time, they are still wrong sometimes.
AI algorithm are wrong because the world is still dynamic and unpredictable. AI will never be prefect because of nature and human free will. AI will make mistakes, and AI systems needs a human to verify and train the system. The bottom line is there needs to be someone there to be kept accountable, and with this. humans are needed whether de jure or de facto for a society-wide acceptance of AI. Dr. Hawking later in the article states his main point, that we need to understand how AI will affect our lives, and I totally agree with that and I think society will evolve to make the policy and legal decisions for such.
These societal rules will come in place because its human nature to blame someone for mistakes.
There will always need to be someone responsible for AI mistakes whether it is an errant autocorrect in your text message to your Mom or mistaken airstrike from an armed drone. There will always need for someone to stop the buck. When thinking about AI remember there will always be someone there wanting to cover their backside.
No Skynet is not coming and it will never come. AI will never totally take over the world. The need for CYA overcomes any AI.
