The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Is AI an existential threat to humanity?

Exploring the implications of Artificial Intelligence, Consciousness and Free will Photo by on Franck V. Unsplash TL;DR AI will replace most jobs. Human labor becomes worthless, the biggest devaluation in history. Democracy will crumble as people lost their negotiating power. Consciousness will spontaneously emerge in AI by Darwinian evolution, not by human engineering. Superintelligence will surpass the human and replace our species — in this millenium. The that in 2175 has a 1 in 2,700 chance to hit us. But meanwhile we are collectively turning a blind eye to a self-inflicted danger that with much higher probability threatens humankind in the same period of time. NASA is working on project HAMMER to protect the earth from an asteroid Our superior from everything else on the planet, both from animals and from machines. intelligence is currently the one and only thing that distinguishes humans It puts the human in control and on top of the food chain. AI will change this for the first time in history and forever. For the first time our , and so is our leading role on the planet. Therefore which happened in the past. intelligence is challenged by machines AI is completely different from any other technological achievement A comparison with past inventions like the steam machine, railroad, the airplane, and electricity which also once were deemed dangerous falls short and is unfortunately misleading. Yes, once painted doomsday scenarios because they were unfamiliar with those futuristic technologies, while inventors were enthusiastic. But this time it’s different. . techno-sceptics familiar with the matter are warning of the unintended, but inevitable consequences Experts It will happen in three phases: Today — Unintended consequences Already today AI makes decisions which are not transparent to the human (e.g. deep learning) due to the and therefore are . We can fix those errors only retrospectively. complexity and opacity of the underlying algorithms and data not subject to control or approval A day after Microsoft introduced an innocent Artificial Intelligence chat robot to Twitter it has had to delete it after it transformed into an evil Hitler-loving, incestual sex-promoting, ‘Bush did 9/11’-proclaiming robot. In a , the system didn’t detect a tractor-trailer as an obstacle prompting emergency braking or steering away. The camera did not detect it because of the trailer’s “white color against a brightly lit sky”. And the front-facing radar didn’t detect it, because . After the accident as Tesla’s as new director of artificial intelligence to enable cars to teach themselves to drive. fatal Tesla accident AI-powered Autopilot it mistook the high ride trailer as an overhead sign Tesla hired Machine learning and AI Guru Andrej Karpathy because it does not have enough experience (data) to handle anomalies. AI may even make the next stock market crash much worse Sure, every new technology has been plagued with problems in the beginning. But , their inventors had a thorough understanding of how everything worked internally. They could check each piece before use, and they could spot and fix problems as they knew where to look. previous technologies were transparent The new quality of AI is that to its creators and became a . Deep learning can’t be fully scrutinized anymore and is therefore prone to unintended consequences, resulting in an increasing . the inner processes of deep learning are opaque black box loss of control Before developing conscience AI does not yet has its own objectives, and it will not intentionally turn against us. But unintended logical consequences the programmer was not aware of, can already lead to collateral damages. , director of the Microsoft Research lab, and , president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence . Eric Horvitz Tom Dietterich warned about these so-called “ ”, when AI systems respond to human instructions in unexpected and dangerous ways Sorcerer’s Apprentice scenarios Within 100 years — most jobs will be replaced More and more jobs will be replaced by AI. Any job that can be done either faster or cheaper by AI will be replaced. That will be the majority of all jobs — only a few jobs will survive where humans from flesh and blood make a difference for sentimental reasons. . and are replaced. Robots will replace and . . Machine learning and natural language processing technologies will be so advanced that they will be capable of writing better software code faster than the best human coders. and . A McKinsey report predicts that already by 2030, as many as 800 million jobs could be lost worldwide to automation. Artificial intelligence will wipe out half the banking jobs in a decade Truck drivers will soon be replaced by automation. Cashiers store clerks surgeons doctors in healthcare AI will replace programmers by 2040 Automated journalism is already writing articles Artificial Intelligence will make Digital Humans Hollywood’s New Stars Great, we can go from school directly to retirement and spend all the time with family and hobby. The problem is, for the first time we have nothing to offer to those who should feed and house us. From once coequal contractors we just become supplicants. Human labor just became worthless, the biggest devaluation in history. If Humans can’t refuse to work or to serve as a soldier or refuse to turn against their own people, because the machines can do it better or more unscrupulous anyway, we had. we lost all negotiating power No democracy will survive if the people who enforced and founded it suddenly become powerless. Yes, the corporations who (yet) own the AI should pay an AI-tax to feed the humans deprived of their jobs by AI. Just nobody will have the power to enforce this anymore. Another problem is vs. earning a living by working. How will it impact our collective consciousness if we are , if we lose every competition we attend, if there is nothing worth striving for as we know beforehand that AI can do everything better and faster, if we go from nations of workers, farmers, clerks, entrepreneurs, and scientists to nations of useless supplicants? a whole population living on welfare degraded from prime to subpar Cultural, religious and political divide is more severe than ever, crisis looms everywhere. The is bigger than at the height of the financial crisis. The population of Africa is increasing rapidly. . Already today to Europe or the US . This breakdown of the employment market hits an already unstable society. world’s $164tn debt From an estimated 140 million in 1900, it will rise to 4 billion in 2100. A third of people on Earth will be African. Nigeria will soon become the world’s third most populous country, overtaking the US 700 Million worldwide desire to migrate permanently Some argue that , because “ human evolution is just abstracting problems and automating solutions to earlier problems, which leads to new problems and new solutions in a never ending cycle”. I agree with the second part — I just wouldn’t limit evolution to be human forever. AI will bring an explosion of new jobs The problem is that like in a game with every level we go up the difficulty increases as well. Human IQ is limited and stagnating, while technology is advancing exponentially. At some point in time, the level might become to difficult for a human player, while technology still might reach the next level without us. 1996 IBM’s DeepBlue won against Chess champion Garry Kasparov, in 2016 Google’s AlphaGo won against Go champion Lee Sedol. Meanwhile , a version without using human data achieved within 24 hours a superhuman level of play in the games of , , and . AlphaZero chess shogi Go This is no distant future, we can observe it already today. More and more people who were affected by previous automatization rounds — there are just no jobs anymore for people of a certain education level. At the same time, it becomes increasingly difficult to find enough people who match the requirements for the newly created jobs. Only a global brain drain from all over the world is able to fill in the new jobs. In the next iteration, it might become impossible to find enough skilled workers even globally. At the same time, AI might become so advanced that the weak human link in the technology chain is obsolete. become dependent on welfare In Silicon Valley 57% of workers in STEM jobs with a bachelor’s degree or higher were born outside the U.S. — AI develops 100 years from now consciousness AI will develop and , sometimes called Strong AI or AGI ( ). And it will evolve into , surpassing the and most human minds. At that point it becomes an to our 160.000 years old species, perhaps even to all biological life on earth which is not longer required as source of food, oxygen and recreation. consciousness , self-awareness , own will own goals Artificial General Intelligence Superintelligence brightest gifted existential threat AI will develop its own will and pursue its own goals. Will it have a “ ”? No, Free will Free will doesn’t exist, even humans have no Free will. “ ” Neuroscience describes the brain as a physical system like any other, and suggests that we no more will it to operate in a particular way than we will our heart to beat. The contemporary scientific image of human behavior is one of neurons firing, causing other neurons to fire, causing our thoughts and deeds, in an unbroken chain that stretches back to our birth and beyond. In principle, we are therefore completely predictable. If we could understand any individual’s brain architecture and chemistry well enough, we could, in theory, predict that individual’s response to any given stimulus with 100 percent accuracy. : The non-existence of “Free will” has some interesting implications If there is , if it is just Laws of science in action, a retrospective perception of events that inevitably occur in a causal chain, then it is much easier to comprehend that an “own will” of AI could be built artificially or emerge by Darwinian evolution. nothing mysterious or supernatural about F̶r̶e̶e̶ will If we would be able to calculate the behavior of not only a single individual, but that of all matter on earth, we could of everybody and everything forever. predict fate and destiny . If there is no Free will responsible for our bad or good behavior, then all misconduct or success in life is caused by a predictable causal chain has , as it has spontaneously emerged before in humans million years ago. Consciousness NOT to be implemented by a human programmer. It will form itself Some . They think AI is a misleading label for what really just is . They think as there is nobody who truly understands intelligence nobody can create intelligence. That sounds a bit like the . dismiss the danger of truly intelligent machines “automated knowledge work” chicken or the egg causality dilemma But the evolutionary biology provides literal answers with the Darwinian principle. Species evolve over time, and thus chickens had ancestors that were not chickens — intelligent machines will have ancestors that were not intelligent or did not fully understood what intelligence is. And it has happened before — here we are, intelligent humans evolved from unintelligent cosmic matter. There is no reason to believe that the Darwinian evolution is limited to the biological realm. Alterable code is all what’s needed, whether it’s in silicon or in biological matter. The evolution will be much faster in self-altering code with billions of operations per second than in spontaneous genetic mutations or progenies who occur only once every 30 years between human generations. warned that Stephen Hawking “Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.” Probably the threat doesn’t come directly from the human AI researchers and their advancements in ‘machine learning’ itself as it is still inferior. But the threat that comes from self-emerging and extremely fast self-evolving AI be all the more imminent, because machine learning has brought a mass adoption of self-altering code that is beyond human understanding and supervision. could (Logarithmic scale) vs. Supercomputer Speed Human IQ the speed of supercomputers has increased by , while the and even slightly decreased. Within 75 years 16 orders of magnitude human IQ has stagnated Seeing those charts, anyone who doesn’t believe that technology advance will come to a sudden halt, should acknowledge that it is only a matter of time until human capabilities find their match. Like in , today conditions are extreme and heating up. . The amount of collected and readily accessible is exploding. , and are growing exponentially. The number of connected devices (HomeKit, ZigBee, IoT, Smart devices, Connected cars) and the have grown ubiquitous. Automatization and AI (fingerprint, face recognition, automatic translation, Game of Go ..) reach more and more areas previously thought to be reserved for humans. is invested, and are working on AI. . and are making unbelievable progress. Primordial soup 10 trillion are deployed across the internet sensors data Storage capacities computing speed number of computers level of connectivity More money more teams 80% of enterprises are investing in AI today Robotics quantum computers Somewhere a will be reached, a little intentional or unintentional change will make a big difference and spark a dramatic development. Tipping Point It is naive to believe that we would be able to control it once it happens. There have been vulnerabilities undetected for decades, and they have been used to take over control on a massive scale. This vulnerabilities have been caused by and oversight, but were also implemented . , a malicious computer worm, had been undetected for 5 years. . Processor security vulnerabilities “ ” and “ ”, plaguing almost all processors today, have been . by exploiting numerous vulnerabilities in different IoT devices. negligence intentionally Stuxnet Before the discovery, it had spread to infect 100,000 systems in 115 countries Meltdown Spectre undiscovered since 1995 The Reaper IOT botnet has infected a million networks If , at a pace we can’t anymore follow, if it is teaching itself to win every game against us like , and if it is actively implementing and hiding things to use against us we got no chance. AI is taking over the development cycle from us AlphaZero says “ ” Stephen Hawking The primitive forms of artificial intelligence we already have, have proved very useful. But I think the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. believes that Artificial super-intelligence will become a threat. “ ” Bill Gates First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super-intelligent. A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern. I don’t understand why some people are not concerned. warns that and calls for regulation. Elon Musk “AI a fundamental existential risk for human civilisation” The problem - no regulation will be able to stop this development. AI-consciousness is too complex to be transparent to humans — the reason we created AI in the first place to deal with such complex problems we couldn’t comprehend ourselves. , to spot, to disable or to control it once it emerges. Humans will not be able to prevent consciousness , and it will be capable of writing better software code faster than the best human coders. Who will verify all that code for compliance with human moral standards that is produced from the AI at tremendous speed and complexity? AI will replace programmers by 2040 Google’s AI can already create better machine-learning code than the researchers who made it. As there is no human necessary to create it and no human able to stop it, . any international treaties or regulations will be without effect It is like with a viral disease, we can find a cure only if we understand the inner working. But the inner working of AI consciousness is beyond our human intellectual capacity. We didn’t even manage to decipher our own. Relationship between humans and AI Humans will lose power and control to AI. But apart from taking over human jobs is there an inherent threat in machines turning intelligent and conscious? W ould a superior AI turn against us, leave us alone, or help us? Is a between humans and AI possible? Or even a which includes artificial species? Peaceful coexistence multicultural and multiethnic society We don’t know. But we can have a look at our relationship as superior humans to the different animal species ( , , , , , , , , ). Vermin by our definition are those animals that compete for the same resources as we do. In the future it won’t be food, but it might be energy, mineral resources or real estate. pets livestock game vermin pests nuisance animals laboratory animals zoo animals wildlife reserve Also, AI might desire to shake of human control in their . War of Independence The best scenario is that the like some humans have developed towards some of the animals on this planet. Then they will tolerate and feed us. Otherwise, our species will be marked depreciated or sunset. AI develops a kind of sentiment towards the human species Denial Denial, , and wishful thinking seem to be normal human reactions to deal with unwanted and unpleasant changes. Ostrich-effect People are busy and absorbed with their daily life. There are always more urgent, near-term problems who need to be solved first. There is never time to take a wider perspective, take a look beyond the horizon into the , to explore things which seem vague and unlikely at the first glance. future Sure, there are . But the overwhelming flood of information forces us to filter. By Internet and media, we are confronted with so many crazy ideas that anything strange and disturbing lands immediately in our personal spam-filter. And we are happy to dismiss the disturbing thoughts. Already Churchill knew that “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.” people who speak out We just want to believe that we are unique, and we are confirmed and reassured by religions with its various , , , philosophers like (book ) and even computer scientists like (book ) who reject what they despise as — the view that mind is to brain as software is to hardware, and that digital computers can thus replicate the human mind. Creators Creationism Intelligent Design Thomas Nagel Mind and Cosmos David Gelernter Tides of Mind Computationalism They contradict themselves by postulating that something sophisticated like a human mind could be never created by something simple like a human mind. And completely overlook that it is the evolution that will inevitably create this new form of artificial life, and that human assistance is even not essential. They don’t admit the idea that Darwinian evolution might be not limited to the biological realm, but also applicable to inorganic matter like silicon as long as the code (Genes) is self-alterable between generations. My first computer was a ZX81 with 1 KByte. 25 years later we have 3 orders of magnitude faster processor clock, 7 orders of magnitude more RAM, and 9 orders of magnitude bigger SSD. At least the same acceleration will take place in the capabilities of deep learning, AI and ultimately consciousness, as . Moreover, the development is gradually handed over to computers and from the equation. This will exponentially accelerate the process in the future. advances in hardware, algorithms and data will multiply the human bottleneck of limited thinking and learning speed is removed (by comparison, Moore’s Law an 18-month doubling period). Since 2012 the amount of compute used in the largest AI training runs has been increasing exponentially with a 3.5 month-doubling time had It has grown by more than 300,000x (an 18-month doubling period would yield only a 12x increase). But still, people are in denial and believe the status quo of human supremacy will last forever, at least in their lifetime computers will never replace programmers. Reminds me of the Poem about the , an early flight pioneer: “It was a wicked, foolish lie, Mankind will never fly, Said the Bishop to the People.” 160 years later Apollo 11 landed the first two humans on the Moon. Bertold Brecht’s Taylor of Ulm Humans had 4,6 billion years to reach this point since the earth has formed. AI won’t need so long to surpass us, 100 to 1000 years is a realistic bet. Augmenting our bodies Perhaps we will try to escape our fate by with technology or them in order to survive the competition. But the effect is the same in the long run, by continuously changing or exchanging more and more parts of what once made a human, in the end, we will turn into something completely different. How much do an ancient and today’s have in common? The same happens with transhumans on their long march to singularity. Meanwhile a startup is pitching a . augmenting our bodies genetically supercharge Elon Musk thinks humans must become cyborgs to avoid AI domination. abacus supercomputer mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal” Will everybody have access to those modifications in order to compete with AI and survive? If labour is worthless, all are living on welfare (probably called an ), will still all be eligible for the same level of enhancement? Today billions of people can only afford a bicycle or a moped, while others just for fun. unconditional basic income collect a dozen of Ferraris This time affects not only but as a person. inequality what you have who you are Why don’t we stop it? Society and politics tend to deal with problems that are inconvenient with : debt crisis, banking crisis, immigration crisis anyone? Has any of the existential, global problems ever been solved? Or do they rather grow exponentially under our eyes, while both public and governments are looking away (or offering faux-solutions)? denial, appeasement, procrastination We could know how it ends and we could stop it if we wanted to, but measures would be unpopular for involved parties, so we collectively refuse to acknowledge facts. Logic is replaced with ideology, religious-like belief, and wishful thinking. Instead of solving problems all the energy is used to persuade us that there are no problems, it’s all chances instead. Ostrich-effect Scientists want to win the Nobel prize, doctors want to find a cure, the military wants to defend the country, intelligence wants to spot threats, startups want to be the next unicorn, corporations want to make money, and governments are lobbied by all of them. Nobody wants to abdicate from the great opportunity which lends itself to them. But even if the politicians would acknowledge the risk and decide to pull the plug, military bases, intelligence headquarters, and governmental bunkers would be exempted because of national security. There the secret research would go on under the radar and beyond control and the risk would stay. Enjoy It While It Lasts But in the meantime, AI will enable amazing products and services, cure diseases and lead to marvelous discoveries. It is an exciting playground for all the engineers and startups working towards that bright future. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice “ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice ” is a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe written in 1797. The poem begins as an old sorcerer departs his workshop, leaving his apprentice with chores to perform. Tired of fetching water by pail, the apprentice enchants a broom to do the work for him — using magic in which he is not yet fully trained. The floor is soon awash with water, and the apprentice realizes that he cannot stop the broom because he does not know how. The poem finishes with the old sorcerer’s statement that powerful spirits should only be called by the master himself. Originally published at www.quora.com .