2023-06-02 03:30:00
What frightens many is the rapid advance of systems that are not only capable of “learning” gigantic amounts of information but also of processing it.
For thousands of years, many have been fascinated by the idea that the world we know is nearing its end. Although some prophets of disasters to come said they were saddened by what they understood was about to happen, others awaited it with satisfaction. evident; in his opinion. those who refused to take them seriously deserved to be punished.
Until a century ago, those obsessed with the presumed proximity of the end days believed it to be the work of the vengeful God of the Old Testament, but since then, such characters have been more prone to attribute it to technological progress, since in the Western imagination science has taken the place once occupied by an all-powerful deity. Thus, the person most responsible for arming the first nuclear bombs, the American Robert Oppenheimer, gave them an ambiguous welcome, citing a verse from the Hindu Baghavad Gita: “Now he has made me death, the destroyer of worlds.” Decades later, the panic caused by climatic changes would come, which, say the most agitated by what is happening, will make the planet hell unless governments ban many industrial and agricultural activities.
As if all that wasn’t enough, in recent months catastrophists have started to warn us of how terribly dangerous Artificial Intelligence is. If hundreds of leading scientists are right, AI poses a deadly risk to mankind. They agree with the famous astrophysicist Stephen Hawking who, before he died, said that if it developed “fully”, it would mean the end of the human race.
what scares them It is the rapid advance of systems that are not only capable of “learning” gigantic amounts of information but also of processing it. Some already “know” everything that is available on the Internet; To the bewilderment of professors in colleges and universities, any student can download applications that will allow them to create, in a couple of seconds, presumably original scholarly essays that are more than satisfactory.
Those concerned about what is happening fear that supercomputers that program themselves, almost instantly overcoming problems that would keep the most seasoned specialists busy for years, they will continue to progress at such a frenetic pace that no one will be able to control them.
A recurring nightmare is that one fine day these artifacts decide to free themselves from human tutelage to subordinate absolutely everything, starting with our species, to their own interests. Although do not manage to cross the hypothetical barrier that separates insensitive machines from living beings, malevolent characters could order them to sow chaos in societies that, to function, already depend on cybernetic systems. With some frequency, government spokesmen of democratic countries accuse the Russians, Chinese, North Koreans and Iranians of attacking them in such a way.
Are those convinced that AI is so dangerous that attempts to push it forward should be suspended for a year or two to give the “international community” time to regulate it, as it is already trying to do with nuclear energy and climate change? Although it is a subject that will clearly affect everyone’s life, very few are in a position to answer the question thus assumed and, of course, opinions are divided.
For those who could qualify as Optimists, it is fanciful to believe that we are facing the appearance of a new form of life that would be capable of evolving so quickly that it would not take long for us to move like the lords of creation. From his point of view, AI is nothing more than a tool that has already proven extremely useful in enabling, among other things, new cures for a wide range of diseases.
Others, perhaps because they are Born pessimists, they disagree. They suspect that scientific and technological progress is about to culminate in a truly catastrophic way and that AI, in the hands of evil subjects or, perhaps, guided only by its own priorities, wreaks havoc. barely conceivable. There are experts in this arcane matter who, without going that far, anticipate that it will have a profound impact on the culture of various societies, which would facilitate the efforts of those determined to change the thinking of entire peoples, in addition to having unhappy consequences for many. people who, until now, have been able to prosper in the “knowledge economy” that is spreading throughout the world. Let us hope that the forecasts of such prophets turn out to be as wrong as those made by their counterparts from previous generations.
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