Gigaom AI Minute – August 8

Transcript

The division between those who are excited about the prospects of an artificial general intelligence and those who are frightened by the same thing couldn't be more stark. There aren't many people who occupy some sort of a middle ground between these two positions. Why is it?

The people who are afraid of what an artificial general intelligence might do have three basic beliefs. The first is that machines can be dramatically smarter and more powerful than humans, the second, that we're getting to a point where machines will be able to improve themselves without our help, and finally, the speed at which all of that will happen is staggeringly fast.

Those who aren't worried about an artificial general intelligence anytime in the foreseeable future also have three things that they believe. They believe, first of all, that general intelligence is incredibly difficult, second that we will likely advance to it at a steady but slow pace with each step along the way being a hard won, and finally that there won't be some "it's alive, it's alive" moment where the machine takes off on its own.

There is little common ground between these two positions other than the simple fact that whatever is possible will happen.