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Friday, September 06, 2019

AI might not kill us, but it will make us excruciatingly boring | Thought Experiment - NBC News

Photo: Adam Frank
We could find ourselves living in a world of unconscious machines destined to make us less human by boxing us into an existence that fits their algorithms, argues Adam Frank, professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester.

Photo: Simone Noronha / for NBC News
Are you just a computer made of meat? Are all your thoughts, feelings and experiences nothing more than circuits made from neurons in your head?

If you’re like a lot of people, your answer to this question will be a definitive “No!” From science to philosophy, there are lots of good reasons to hold that human beings are more than just computing machines. Unfortunately, many of the technologists bringing versions of artificial intelligence to the market are already sure they know that we are.

For them people are, indeed, just biological computers. And, based on this flawed perspective, powerful new machines are being built and pushed out into the world right now. If we’re not careful, we may all find ourselves living in a world of unconscious machines destined to make us less human by boxing us into an existence that fits their algorithms.

A few years ago, I attended a lecture that scared the pants off me because it demonstrated this mindset at work...

Beyond the specific example of emotional computing, the big problem with thinking of people as computers is that once you take that step, the only thing that matters is what can be computed and therefore predicted. Exactly how well can your last music purchase be linked to your political affiliation? Given your credit card use last week, exactly how likely is it that you’ll respond to an ad for a Disney cruise on Facebook?
Read more... 

Source: NBC News