It is an issue that concerns some of the greatest minds in the world at the moment, from Bill Gates to Elon Musk.
SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk described AI as our ‘greatest existential threat’ and compared its development to ‘summoning the demon’.
He believes that super-intelligent machines can use humans as pets.
Professor Stephen Hawking said it is “almost certain” that a major technological disaster will threaten humanity for the next 1,000 to 10,000 years.
They could steal jobs
More than 60 percent of people fear that robots will lead to fewer jobs in the next ten years, according to a 2016 YouGov survey.
And 27% predict that the number of jobs will “greatly” decrease, with previous surveys suggesting that workers in the administrative and service sectors will be hardest hit.
In addition to posing a threat to our jobs, other experts believe that AI can “become dishonest” and become too complex for scientists to understand.
A quarter of respondents predicted that robots will become part of everyday life in just 11 to 20 years, with 18% predicting that this will happen in the next decade.
They could ‘be dishonest’
Computer scientist, Professor Michael Wooldridge, said that AI machines can become so complex that engineers don’t fully understand how they work.
If experts don’t understand how AI algorithms work, they won’t be able to predict when they will fail.
This means that driverless cars or smart robots can make unpredictable decisions “out of character” during critical moments, which can put people in danger.
For example, AI behind a driverless car may choose to detour pedestrians or hit barriers instead of deciding to drive carefully.
They could end humanity
Some people believe that AI will completely eliminate humans.
“Eventually, I think that human extinction is likely to occur, and technology is likely to play a role in that,” DeepMind’s Shane Legg said in a recent interview.
He highlighted artificial intelligence, or AI, as the “number one risk of this century”.
Musk warned that AI poses a greater threat to humanity than North Korea.
– If you are not concerned about AI security, you should be. Much more risk than North Korea, ‘wrote the 46-year-old man on Twitter.
‘Nobody likes to be regulated, but everything (cars, airplanes, food, drugs, etc.) that is a danger to the public is regulated. AI should be too. ‘
Musk has consistently advocated that governments and private institutions apply regulations on AI technology.
He argued that controls are necessary to protect machines from advancing beyond human control.