Computer mogul and philanthropist Bill Gates has joined fellow "brainiacs" Stephen Hawking and Tesla Motors Founder Elon Musk in arguing that artificial intelligence (AI) may pose a threat to humanity.
In a
Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on Wednesday, Gates echoed concerns expressed over the past year by Musk, Hawking and others about the spread of artificial intelligence.
"I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence. [At] first the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage it well," Gates wrote. "A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern. I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don’t understand why some people are not concerned."
People like Hawking, Musk and Gates worry "that something vaguely resembling the science fiction scenarios from the Terminator and Matrix franchises could come to pass if the potential of artificial superintelligence is not taken seriously," according to
Forbes.com.
Earlier this month, Musk announced he would spend $10 million "to support research aimed at keeping AI beneficial for humanity,"
Forbes reports.
But the warnings by Musk and others about potential dangers resulting from uncontrolled use of artificial intelligence should not be taken as outright opposition.
The Quartz website observes, for example, that in his Reddit session, Gates also discussed advances in personal computing that utilize artificial intelligence, such as a Microsoft project called Personal Agent that works across devices to "remember everything and help you go back and find things and help you pick what things to pay attention to."
As for Hawking, he recently noted that the very Intel system that helps him speak to compensate for having Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease) utilizes AI to predict his next words. But
in the same BBC interview, Quartz observed, Hawking also warned that there is a danger that artificial intelligence could overtake human beings:
"The primitive forms of artificial intelligence we already have, have proved very useful. But I think the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. Once humans develop artificial intelligence it would take off on its own and redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete and would be superseded."
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