Those Amazing Electronic Thinking Machines by Isaac Asimov

The existential showdown: Nine warning signs The big fear is that this plodding developmental pace might one day strike a super-intelligent megacomputer as pathetic - and, in a fit of supreme intelligence, it could decide that humans are no longer much fun to have around. It takes about 25 years to teach a human how to do anything useful. Once computers can mimic the synaptic wonders of the human brain, they will continue evolving, ushering in the much-discussed “singularity” - when computers that have access to all of the world’s knowledge will begin teaching themselves, continuously redesigning and improving their neuro-electronic pathways to the point where human thought is, essentially, obsolete. Moore’s Law suggests that processing power doubles every 18 months. One reason the computer cognoscenti are so concerned about AI is that computer-processing power is rapidly becoming so powerful that it will soon - somewhere between 20, by most estimates - be capable of executing as many simultaneous calculations as the human brain. Now, however, we are being asked, and warned, to take this threat seriously. Of course, super-intelligent machines taking over the world has been a trope of science fiction for decades, from Karel Capek’s 1921 play “R.U.R.,” in which a race of self-replicating robot slaves revolts against its masters, to Isaac Asimov’s short story “Robot Dreams” from movies such as “2001: A Space Odyssey,” the “Terminator” series and “The Matrix” to TV shows such as “Star Trek” and “Battlestar Galactica.” It even shows up in video shoot-em-ups like “Halo” and “Mass Effect.” In a forum on the Reddit website earlier this year, Microsoft founder and philanthropist Gates said he agreed with Musk that advanced AI represents an “existential threat” to humanity, and added, “I don’t understand why some people are not concerned.” In a recent symposium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tesla’s Musk said that creating advanced artificial intelligence was “summoning the demon.” Late last year, Hawking, a physicist, came right out and told the BBC: “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.” That is, we should be worried about supersmart robots and computers guided by a globally networked über-entity that will one day be able to outlearn, outthink and outcompete the human species and send it hurtling toward extinction. No, according to these famous forward-thinkers, the threat we should really be worried about is advanced artificial intelligence.

In recent months, several prominent champions of technology - Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, and Tesla founder Elon Musk among them - have declared that the greatest threat to humankind is not climate change, nuclear warfare, religious fanaticism or bacterial superbugs.

Those Amazing Electronic Thinking Machines by Isaac Asimov