The RSA information security conference this week in San
Francisco has been a labyrinth filled with professionals who believe
they know best when it comes to information and the Internet. But
what if in 25 years humans are no longer good enough to be the
gatekeepers of the Internet?
Nick Bostrom, a professor of philosophy at the
University of Oxford and founding director of the Future of Humanity
Institute, spoke in a keynote address at the Moscone Center
conference about the “Midas effect” of wanting artificial
intelligence (AI) as smart as humans and ignoring potential
downsides.
“You would no longer have some cool technology toy
[in AI],” Bostrom said. “You would have the last invention
that humans will need to make.”
During his 30-minute talk, Bostrom outlined three points
about AI: Artificial intelligence on a level with human intelligence
is a very good likelihood by 2050; the rise of superintelligent
machines beyond the control of humans may be a possibility; and
superintelligence could either prove a path to “cosmic
endowment”—the potential to colonize the universe using
technology—or to the extinction of the human race.
While his talk of cosmic endowment may sound a bit New
Age, Bostrom has been one of the most prominent scholars on the
philosophy and ethics behind AI, frequently speaking in TED talks and
featured in articles, including ones in The New Yorker and The
Atlantic. His skeptical view of the robotic future has the support of
such Silicon Valley executives as Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Bostrom's talk also surveyed the current innovations in
the artificial intelligence community, ranging from cybersecurity
(hence the invitation to RSA) to lethal automatic weapons like
predator drones. Bostrom expressed both excitement and concern over
the recent zeal for AI technology, most notably with the recent news
of Google’s deep-learning AI system's “dreaming” of
psychedelic-looking images. Using the fable of King Midas as an
example, Bostrom worried about engineers’ “literal fulfillment
of a wish but with qualifications.”
According to a survey he conducted among industry
experts, most predicted a 50 percent likelihood of human-level AI
being available between 2040 and 2050. With decades to mitigate the
“extinction risk,” a phrase he coined in 2002, Bostrom hoped for
more pre-emptive caution. “[AI’s] still a fragile thing,”
Bostrom said. “The view that we will have machine intelligence
in our lifetimes is not some ridiculous idea but a very mainstream
idea.”
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