According to the expert, the development of artificial intelligence is now moving too fast for it to be possible to keep the situation under control. He has a very pessimistic view of the future of humanity.
Artificial intelligence will not destroy the world, but only the people who inhabit it, the artificial intelligence expert and researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky believes.
Yudkowsky, who is known for his controversial views, has once again made dark assessments about how artificial intelligence will turn out to be the fate of humanity.
The British newspaper The Guardian interviewed several experts who are, to say the least, pessimistic about the development of artificial intelligence, but Yudkowsky’s statements are in a class of their own.
– If you force me to estimate the probabilities, I would say that humanity has five rather than fifty years left. It could be two years, it could be ten, he shuddered.
Although the development of artificial intelligence still makes us amazed at the technological advances made by humanity, Yudkowsky believes that the wonder will soon be over.
His fear is a god-level super-intelligence that is too smart and fast for humans to control. According to him, artificial intelligence should not be thought of as a brain closed in a box that does what is asked, because, according to Yudkowsky, artificial intelligence that is more advanced than humans will find ways to get out of the box.
– Try to imagine an alien civilization that thinks a thousand times faster than us, he said.
Yudkowsky is the founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) in California. He has been working on the development of artificial intelligence since 2001.
The non-profit institute is focused on identifying risks related to the development of artificial intelligence. The institute aims to promote methods of operation that ensure that artificial intelligence models remain friendly.
Strong statements before
In his article published in Time magazine last spring, Yudkowsky hoped, among other things, to bomb data centers to the ground in order to stop artificial intelligence.
– Artificial intelligence doesn’t love people, but it doesn’t hate either. It thinks that the atoms of which man is made could just be put to better use elsewhere.
In addition, he compared the unequal situation between humanity and artificial intelligence to a 10-year-old playing chess against the world’s most advanced chess engine.
Yudkowsky also offered his dark views to Bloomberg last summer.
– I think we are not ready, and we don’t know what we are doing. I believe we all die, he stated.
Others are worried about completely different things
However, numerous experts are of the opinion that there is no need to worry about the development of artificial intelligence to the point where it would destroy humanity.
Instead, they fear that painting pictures of existential threats will draw attention away from more concrete problems related to the spread and development of artificial intelligence, such as the spread of false information.
Sources: The Guardian, Time, Bloomberg