In a recent interview, Pedro Domingos the inventor of Markov Logic Network, expressed his view that fears about AI are unfounded and stem from projecting human qualities onto AI, which it does not inherently possess.
It is essential to consider that AI does not possess any of the human qualities such as emotions, desires, intentions, consciousness, or the will to power, but safety will come from making AI smarter, not dumber.
He explained, “First of all, we have to understand the problem, the intuition that people naturally have about AI is wrong. These fears stem from that intuition, and the intuition really has to do with the only intelligence that we know is human intelligence, and so when we start thinking about AI, we immediately project onto it all of these human qualities like emotions, desires, intentions, consciousness, the will to power, etc., etc.”
Given that AI has none of that, this could just be a bad inference on our part, which, unfortunately, could be fostered by Hollywood movies, science fiction scenarios, and probably by elements of Western culture like Genesis.
So the need to clearly distinguish between these misconceptions and the reality of AI is of paramount importance.
While discussing the importance of making AI smarter for safety, one should also remember that the problem with AI is that it is potentially dangerous, which makes it necessary to make it more constrained and less intelligent.
In an earlier interaction with AIM, Domingos stated that there is a downside to this, “It is becoming impossible to keep up with the field. It is good that we have a thriving industry because of its impact factor, but on the other hand, it becomes a lot more difficult to change. We will have to fight this inertia.”
Similar to Domingos, Aidan Gomez, CEO and co-founder of Cohere, stated fears of an AI takeover are unfounded due to its reliance on human training data and the limits of exponential growth.
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