Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, who knows a thing or two about technology, is concerned about the day when our artificial intelligence gets a little too smart for its own good and decides it probably doesn’t have to listen to the dumb humans anymore.
Also, why aren’t you concerned?, he wonders.
Gates hosted a reddit AMA on Wednesday, and was asked about the “existential threat” of machine superintelligence. His answer? Hell yeah it’s a issue.
“I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence. 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. 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,” said Gates.
As of late, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has been the most outspoken rich tech dude when it comes to the dangers of AI. He recently called for extensive research to make sure AI doesn’t kill us all, and even make a huge donation to the cause. In the past, he’s said things like …
We need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes.
and
You have no idea how fast [AI] is growing at a pace close to exponential. The risk of something seriously dangerous happening is in the five year timeframe. 10 years at most. This is not a case of crying wolf about something I don’t understand.
Gates also had this to say during his AMA:
“There will be more progress in the next 30 years than ever. Even in the next 10 problems like vision and speech understanding and translation will be very good. Mechanical robot tasks like picking fruit or moving a hospital patient will be solved. Once computers/robots get to a level of capability where seeing and moving is easy for them then they will be used very extensively.”
Oh goody.
Image via thegatesnotes, YouTube