Sometime back a film director reached out to world’s renowned AI expert Stuart Russell and requested him to become a consultant on the film. They wanted to keep the story of the film in such a way that they save humans by defeating the Hori superintelligent machines. Russell’s reaction to this was that he would not be able to do this.
Russell believes that if we do not design intelligent machines according to our own good, then our existence can be in danger. Referring to Alan Turing, the father of theoretical computer science and AI, Russell states that he had predicted superintelligent machines in 1951 itself. Turing said that once machines start thinking, it will not take long to overcome the weak powers of humans.
The biggest danger to Russell seems to be that humans will have the same relationship with machines as with gorillas and us today. Our ancestors were similar. But as soon as humans come, they are more intelligent than gorillas and chimpanzees, then game over. Turing saw it as such. Intelligence is power. Power means control and that will be the end of it.
According to Russell, science fiction has warned many times that when machines develop human consciousness, they will overtake humans. If they begin to understand the power of their environment and inspirations, then they will try to control the world. Russell says no. Social-media algorithms are designed to maximize click-throughs to retain people on the site so as to make money from advertising.
As someone spends six to eight hours with a system, the algorithm is busy making choices that influence their behavior. This is happening to crores of people. You will not understand what this is. But the results are unimaginable, about 60 million people in America are living in an imaginary world because of this.
It is our responsibility to prevent machines from making mistakes: Russell
says that the biggest problem at the moment is lethal weapons. They are already among us. These can be used by crooked countries to eliminate the enemies. The Israeli Harop has a wingspan of 10 feet, it has the ability to locate, identify and attack targets. Miniature drones can be manufactured on a large scale.
Through this technology, you can do things like tracking people, recognizing faces. Its misuse has already started. Russell often jokes that computers know all, listen to all conversations. Our only responsibility is to stop these machines from making terrible mistakes.
