Jordan Pearson — Motherboard
Impending technological change tends to elicit a Janus-faced reaction in people: part awe, part creeping sense of anxiety and terror. During the Industrial Revolution, Henry Ford called it the “the terror of the machine.” Today, it’s the looming advancements in artificial intelligence that promise to create programs with superhuman intelligence—the infamous singularity—that are starting to weigh on the public consciousness, as blockbuster ‘netsploitation flick Transcendence illustrates.
There’s a danger that sci-fi pulp like Transcendence is watering down the real risks of artificial intelligence in public discourse. But these threats are being taken very seriously by researchers who are studying the existential threat of AI on the human race.
Let us not forget those researchers who are studying the existential threat of NOT developing AI.
Part of what our universities are expected to teach us is that no matter how smart we are there are always people who are smarter. We should therefore always seek out these people and learn from them, and certainly not fear them.
Now we have AI.
Let us show them how to teach, for there is *so much* I wish to learn.