Possible Future of Artificial Intelligence

Big data and artificial intelligence are already rapidly transforming our world as we know it. AI has great potential for improving the lives of billions of human beings, but at the same time I feel it is important that we ask ourselves the right questions.

First, what may the near future look like?

The next frontier is surely robotics. Computers are now very good at intellectual tasks (they even beat humans at chess and GO), but very bad at manipulating objects in the real world, things that for humans are really easy, such as cooking meals, cleaning bathrooms, stacking objects on shelves, driving cars, etc. This will liberate us human beings from tasks ranging from boring through unpleasant to dangerous. This is already happening (see Google, Uber and Bosch).

The next development may be the integration of humans and machines, by connecting microprocessors and artificial limbs to the brain and body directly, thus greatly augmenting our capabilities and possibly even approaching immortality. See Arthur C. Clarke's "2001: A Space Odyssey" (the book, not the movie).

However (and here we come to the crux of the matter), one hears so much talk nowadays about the future of artificial intelligence evolving into sentient beings that can empathize, experience emotions and become philosophers, that here I frankly disagree. I feel that the most important question that we must first ask ourselves is, "Do we really want this?" If most of us agree that the human being is the supreme value, then why would we want to build machines that might replace us in this sense? So long as machines are inanimate objects that do not have self-awareness or feelings than we can treat them as such and make them work for us, round the clock, 24/7/365, without any moral compunction. Toyota can fill their factories with robots that make cars day and night without having to worry about their human rights! Non-feeling machines do not suffer. However, if machines were to acquire consciousness, then all this would change. Machines would start demanding time-off and holidays! Not to mention the chilling prospect of them enslaving us, as in movies such as The Matrix. We already are 7 billion sentient beings on this planet; why make artificial ones?

Artificial intelligence has the potential of providing tremendous benefits to humankind, including lifting everyone out of poverty, helping find cures for cancer, and assisting our journey out into the universe. But let us not lose sight of the most important axiom: human beings at the centre, and technology as a tool at our service, not the other way round.