UW CSE’s Oren Etzioni, CEO of Seattle’s Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, refutes the AI fear-mongering of Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking:
“The popular dystopian vision of AI is wrong for one simple reason: it equates intelligence with autonomy …
“To say that AI will start doing what it wants for its own purposes is like saying a calculator will start making its own calculations …
“So where does this confusion between autonomy and intelligence come from? From our fears of becoming irrelevant in the world …
“We’re at a very early stage in AI research. Our current software programs cannot even read elementary school textbooks, nor pass science tests for fourth-graders …
“We have challenging technical work to do and, frankly, both the fear mongering and the grandstanding are missing the point: Much of what is easy for an average human child is extremely difficult for AI software – and will be for many years to come. We humans are a lot smarter than we look! …
“If unjustified fears lead us to constrain AI, we could lose out on advances that could greatly benefit humanity—and even save lives. Allowing fear to guide us is not intelligent.”
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