Will Artificial Intelligence Be The End Humanity?

When you think of artificial intelligence, what comes to mind? Perhaps you think of the Will Smith movie, "I-Robot". Maybe you think of "RoboCop", "The Terminator", or a cyborg of some sort.

The idea of A.I. may sound pretty cool to you. A super intelligent being who can extend our human limitations, you know? A being who can do extreme calculations in seconds or Maybe this A.I. will be able to perform tasks that you find tedious like clean the house or cook your family dinner. The technology may advance so much that this A.I. can serve as your companion or confidant.

But what if they turn on you? What if this artificial intelligence was weaponized by another group that was out to harm you? Some of the world’s greatest minds including Bill Gates, and Stephen Hawking believe that A.I. is a real threat to humanity, more so than nuclear weapons.

Engineer and inventor Elon Musk states to AeroAstro Centennial Symposium:

“I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I were to guess like what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful with the artificial intelligence. Increasingly scientists think there should be some regulatory oversight maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish. With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like yeah he’s sure he can control the demon. Didn't work out.”

Summoning a demon? It sounds intense. It is something that we should not take lightly. The thing is, once we start building machines that can surpass us humans in intelligence, then the rivalry begins. The unfortunate truth is that it will become difficult for us to survive. We will lose. You see, A.I.’s don’t have the restrictions that humans have. We are biologically restricted in many ways. We need food, water, and our life spans are limited for example. Super-intelligent machines are not limited to these things.

Bill Gates has said that the demise will be gradual of course. The machines will do simple jobs for us initially but as the technology advances, the intelligence will become a “concern”. Is the demise of humankind inevitable or can we keep artificial intelligence under control?

At this point, we will just have to wait and see. Artificial intelligence has many benefits and it’s truly exciting to see the advances that will be made in nearly every field like science and medicine. The only thing I know for sure is that we must remain aware of the issue. If not, it may be the end of humanity as we know it.