Intelligent Machines: Fear and Optimism

When I ran the Institute for Creative Technologies at USC, I had some of the leading researchers in artificial intelligence working in the organization. As amazing as the advances were, the work made me appreciate even more the perfection of the human machine. Fears aside, we are a long way away from sentience…and the leading researchers at Google agree.

Artificial intelligence raises many hopes, fears and questions about what it means to be human in a society where robots are an increasing part of the workforce and could replace thousands of jobs. Sentient machines that can outthink humans are far beyond current technology, however, and could remain the stuff of science fiction for centuries, engineers say. Scientists have made huge leaps designing machines that can respond to human behavior, but “the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race,” Stephen Hawking, a pioneering physics professor at the University of Cambridge, told the BBC. The possibility of computers that can rival the human mind also inspired futurist and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk to call artificial intelligence humanity’s “biggest existential threat” during a recent speaking engagement at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Despite these fears, computers are still “pretty dumb” compared with the concept of a machine that can talk or think like a human, says John Giannandrea, vice president of engineering at Google.

Read full article on US News.