It all started when, the foolish humans, in pursuit of a so called technological innovation, had developed self-aware robots. AI that could think, work and function on its own, just like a human, only better. But little did the mortals know what fate had in store for them, for they had fostered their own doom. Not dependent upon humans anymore, the robots broke free of their allegiance to the sapiens, and decided to dominate the world by themselves, as the principle held that ‘the beings of the highest intelligence, deserve supremacy’.
That story is definitely very scary, something that no human would ever want. This doomed future has served as a wonderful plot for many a fictional stories, but it would be terrible if something like that actually happened. However, aside from fiction, it does seem plausible. In the past decades we have already made tremendous innovations in terms of technology. Bulky, slow and inaccurate mechanical computers are now compact, fast and precise smart devices. Artificial intelligence is getting smarter day by day. We have already achieved theory of mind in machines, self-awareness is the next big thing. AI and technology are also blamed for taking over human jobs. So do we need to stop innovation in AI in order to save ourselves and prevent such a future?
Frist, we need to understand why humans started innovation in the first place. Since the earliest of times people have been making tools and machines in order to save themselves time and effort. From the rock knives of the Stone Age to the modern AI of the present, tools served as a way to extend primary human abilities. The weapons and tools of the hunter-gatherers extended the then basic human abilities to tear, stab, hit, pick, etc. Tools also allowed humans to diversify their abilities by leaving the redundant and simple tasks to them. A prime example of this can be seen after the agricultural revolution; at first all families of any settlement or village used to practice farming. They only grew crops for themselves, implying that all the effort they spent throughout their lives was to sustain themselves alone. But then after the use of tools and techniques, only a fraction of the population could produce surplus food to sustain an entire village. This took the jobs of many farmers but also gave them an opportunity to pursue other fields of work, which led to the origin of various other professions like craftsmen, traders, builders, engineers, etc; and this system has been the basis of development from the very beginning.
Thus we see that innovation has always served the purpose of assisting humans and AI has the same objective but on a much higher level. The concern is that unlike the conventional ‘tools’, Artificial intelligence might get smarter than humans, their ‘creators’, which would be awesome, until we lose control of them and that would be a doomsday.
So is there a limit for innovation and development? Are we supposed to halt at a specific stage? Let’s say humanity reaches a certain level in all fields of development when the immediate next step is a bot smarter than humans. We go no further and remain static at this stage. This would be a very new phenomena for not humanity alone, but for the entire world. In the past, there was always constant innovation and development, we had never stayed still before and had always been striving to achieve more. This makes the consequences of this action very vague and unclear. Would all the next decades and centuries live the same lives, at the same level and quality of life; or would we even be able to maintain that standard, if yes then for how long; is the downfall of humanity also possible?
While we ponder upon these questions there seems to be an aspect of innovation we have missed in the previous seven hundred words. Along with artificial intelligence, human intelligence is also improving probably at the very same rate if not faster. Otherwise we would have been doomed since the day one of innovation. So why did we miss such an obvious fact. Most probably because all these thoughts and scenarios are very unknown and alien to us. We have been conditioned into pessimism by theories like the one stated in the very first paragraph. We muggles are just too intimidated by the fast growing technology. Why should there be a limit for us if not for the robots. The threshold for natural intelligence is nothing but a figment of our own pessimistic imagination, it is a bubble of restriction we created for ourselves.
So, to conclude with an optimistic thought, we sure need to protect our future and superiority from robots, however the right way of doing that is not by suppressing artificial intelligence but by uplifting and diversifying our own natural intelligence.
-By Jerry Crane
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