From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
We don't trust human beings to do things without being audited, and we're now getting AI to do those very same things without the same checks and balances.
Think about a rabbit sitting in a field. If that rabbit saw a hawk circling above and decided to wait for the back-propagation step before responding, it would be dead. The better you model the world, and the faster you can act on that model, the more likely your genes are to survive.
Humanity has the arrogance to believe that our intelligence is the only form of intelligence. Of course, we're arrogant enough to believe that we are the most intelligent being on the planet. We don't really know what intelligence is.
For instance, while AI can generate images that appear real, it cannot create convincing backgrounds that can be geolocated, since they do not correspond to actual places.
We have a lot of phobias around algorithms. Sometimes this is justified, but in the main, it's like being afraid of cockroaches or spiders. Algorithms aren't spiders or cockroaches, they're an instrument and sometimes will outperform human judgement terrifically well – and sometimes won't. If lives are on the line and it turns out an algorithm reduces the noise of the human decision maker and the bias, then the moral case for using the algorithm starts to look really strong.
Super intelligence would be the last invention biological man would ever need to make, since, by definition, it would be much better at inventing than we are. All sorts of theoretically possible technologies could be developed quickly by super intelligence — advanced molecular manufacturing, medical nanotechnology, human enhancement technologies, uploading, weapons of all kinds.
At some point, if this kind of technological progress continues, it would seem that our descendants will become entirely digital: uploads or artificial intellects implemented on computers. At that point, it is possible that evolutionary selection will again become an important driver of change—but not necessarily of change for the better.
The brain is definitely not doing computation in the purest sense. We are not crunching numbers in binary ones and zeros in our heads. When people ask me how our system compares to an NVIDIA GPU in terms of FLOPS, I tell them they're asking the wrong question. A more important question is: what are your inputs, what output do you want, and how intelligently can the system get from one to the other?
In discussing the responsible deployment of AI in healthcare, I believe there are three key areas where it can create significant impact. First, AI should enhance healthcare equity. Second, it should increase efficiency. And third, it should improve effectiveness.
It's the ultimate invention—the last one we'll ever need to make—because once we have AI that is generally intelligent and then superintelligent, it will do the inventing far better than we can. In that sense, it's a handing over of the baton.
Algorithms understand and can guide me better than I can guide myself. The real game-changer is data. I'm willing to yield control to an algorithm that proves to be superior.
As you think this through, a lot of structure dissolves. And then the question becomes: what remains once all of that is gone? You could still choose to do these activities, of course, but there would no longer be any point—no instrumental need. You would only do them simply because you wanted to…