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Artificial Intelligence
Which paragraph contains the following information?
1. Some notable scientists are worried about the potential impact of AI.
2. We have not yet developed a general artificial intelligence that would surpass human
intelligence in every area.
3. There is no way of knowing how AI may behave in the future.
4. Most experts predict that AI will reach human levels of intelligence this century.
A) From SIRI to self-driving cars, artificial intelligence (AI) is progressing rapidly. While
science fiction often portrays AI as robots with human-like characteristics, AI can
encompass anything from Google’s search algorithms to IBM’s Watson to autonomous
weapons.
B) Artificial intelligence today is properly known as narrow AI (or weak AI), in that it is
designed to perform a narrow task e.g. only facial recognition or only internet searches or
only driving a car. However, the long-term goal of many researchers is to create general AI
(AGI or strong AI). While narrow AI may outperform humans at whatever its specific task
is, like playing chess or solving equations, AGI would outperform humans at nearly every
cognitive task.
C) In the near term, the goal of keeping AI’s impact on society beneficial motivates
research in many areas, from economics and law to technical topics such as verification,
validity, security and control. Whereas it may be little more than a minor nuisance if your
laptop crashes or gets hacked, it becomes all the more important that an AI system does
what you want it to do if it controls your car, your airplane, your pacemaker, your
automated trading system or your power grid.
D) Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates, and many other big names
in science and technology have recently expressed concern in the media and via open
letters about the risks posed by AI, joined by many leading AI researchers. Why is the
subject suddenly in the headlines?
E) The idea that the quest for strong AI would ultimately succeed was long thought of as
science fiction, centuries or more away. However, thanks to recent breakthroughs, many AI
milestones, which experts viewed as decades away merely five years ago, have now been
reached, making many experts take seriously the possibility of super-intelligence in our
lifetime. While some experts still guess that human-level AI is centuries away, most AI
researches at the 2015 Puerto Rico Conference guessed that it would happen before
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2060. Since it may take decades to complete the required safety research, it is prudent to
start it now.
F) Because AI has the potential to become more intelligent than any human, we have no
surefire way of predicting how it will behave. We can’t use past technological
developments as much of a basis because we’ve never created anything that has the
ability to, wittingly or unwittingly, outsmart us. The best example of what we could face may
be our own evolution. People now control the planet, not because we’re the strongest,
fastest or biggest, but because we’re the smartest. If we’re no longer the smartest, are we
assured to remain in control?
(Source: futureoflife.org)
