How far are we from a fully robot led world? Is there a risk that AI will overtake us some day? Can the human race become extinct because of AI?
In the last post we talked about what AI is and how it works. But there are many theories of Zombie apocalypse with Robots thinking for themselves and taking over our planet. So how realistic is this?
To answer this question, we need to first clarify the difference between Narrow AI and General AI.
1. Narrow AI is artificial intelligence focused on solving a specific problem: playing chess, or driving a car. As this type of AI is trained billions and billions of times with data on this specific problem, it can become and has become better than humans at solving the problem. In 2017, the Google trained AI defeated the world champion en titre in a game of GO. AlphaGo ( the Google AI specialized in playing GO) has built up its knowledge by downloading older matches and playing thousands of games against itself.
2. General AI – represents the idea of building intelligent systems that can handle more tasks or problems from various domains, with the ability to quickly adapt to a changing environment, learn , and plan for the future. They can display creativity and express emotions. Something like the character DATA from the movie Star Trek.
As we continue to push the limits of AI, our definition and understanding is changing as well. If we look only a few years back – the development of an AI chatbot from Google which sounds incredibly human was a huge breakthrough. Today it is almost current business. The speed of development in this industry is fantastic and we are living every day with the technology we did not even dream about 50 years ago.
Well, not really…let’s take home chores for example…we have intelligent cleaning robots, maybe even intelligent washing machines….but we are some years away from building a machine that is capable of doing laundry…the full process : washing, folding and putting the clothes in the right place.
And this is just one area …if we were to call it an AGI, the machine should not only do laundry – the full process, but also cooking full process, cleaning full process, helping the kids with home work , walking the dog, displaying affection…this is AGI, and to me it doesn’t seem plausible it will come soon.
And from that to a self-sufficient robot that can make up its own mind, have goals and plan for the future to destroy the human race – this is a whole new level and looking from where we are today, it does not seem plausible.
So, sorry to blow up the hopes of a capable personal assistant coming up soon – but until then, you can have a look at the cool gadgets sections, to find some intelligent tools that can make your lives easier.