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Dan Patterson, senior producer for CNET and CBS News observes, Machine superintelligence is still years away, but artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping transportation, medicine, agriculture and more.
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| Photo: courtesy of Farbentek at FreeDigitalPhotos.net |
Robot overlords. Sentient computers. Digital Armageddon. This is what many people fear when they think about artificial intelligence.
But AI technology is often misunderstood, and the many benefits of machine intelligence are easy to overlook.
The dystopian vision of AI as an omniscient superintelligence is nothing like the technology we see and use today. Contemporary AI is actually a cluster of related technologies—machine learning, supervised learning, and computer vision, for example—that allow companies to automate tasks at large scale.
"There are a lot of real risks to AI," said CNET senior editor Stephen Shankland, like "job displacement, more advanced weapons, and new ways for humans to be bad to other humans." But sci-fi scenarios "vastly overstate the risk."
AI is already deeply embedded in our homes, work, and the world around us...
Artificial intelligence is easily misunderstood, said quantitative futurist Amy Webb, because AI is tied to the way our brains work and how we think. Sci-fi scenarios about robot overlords and machine superintelligence eclipsing humans come from a fear of the unknown.
"Philosophers, mathematicians, and theologians have for centuries been trying to figure out the relationship between mind and machine," Webb said. "Even Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy," who coined that term AI, "knew that the moment that a technology becomes indispensable it becomes invisible."
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Source: CBS News
