Worried about super-intelligent machines? They
are already here
John
Naughton
Forget about the danger of robots creating a
sci-fi-style dystopia. The modern corporation is already doing all of that
Hilary
Swank in AI thriller I Am Mother (2019).
Hilary
Swank in AI thriller I Am Mother (2019). Photograph: Netflix
Sat 25 Dec
2021 16.00 GMT
In the
first of his four (stunning) Reith lectures on living with artificial
intelligence, Prof Stuart Russell, of the University of California at Berkeley,
began with an excerpt from a paper written by Alan Turing in 1950. Its title
was Computing Machinery and Intelligence and in it Turing introduced many of
the core ideas of what became the academic discipline of artificial
intelligence (AI), including the sensation du jour of our own time, so-called
machine learning.
From this
amazing text, Russell pulled one dramatic quote: “Once the machine thinking
method had started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers. At
some stage therefore we should have to expect the machines to take control.”
This thought was more forcefully articulated by IJ Good, one of Turing’s
colleagues at Bletchley Park: “The first ultra-intelligent machine is the last
invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough
to tell us how to keep it under control.”
Russell was
an inspired choice to lecture on AI, because he is simultaneously a world
leader in the field (co-author, with Peter Norvig, of its canonical textbook,
Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, for example) and someone who
believes that the current approach to building “intelligent” machines is
profoundly dangerous. This is because he regards the field’s prevailing concept
of intelligence – the extent that actions can be expected to achieve given
objectives – as fatally flawed.
One expert joked that he worried about
super-intelligent machines in the same way that he fretted about overpopulation
on Mars
AI
researchers build machines, give them certain specific objectives and judge
them to be more or less intelligent by their success in achieving those
objectives. This is probably OK in the laboratory. But, says Russell, “when we
start moving out of the lab and into the real world, we find that we are unable
to specify these objectives completely and correctly. In fact, defining the
other objectives of self-driving cars, such as how to balance speed, passenger
safety, sheep safety, legality, comfort, politeness, has turned out to be
extraordinarily difficult.”
That’s
putting it politely, but it doesn’t seem to bother the giant tech corporations
that are driving the development of increasingly capable, remorseless,
single-minded machines and their ubiquitous installation at critical points in
human society.
This is the
dystopian nightmare that Russell fears if his discipline continues on its
current path and succeeds in creating super-intelligent machines. It’s the
scenario implicit in the philosopher Nick Bostrom’s “paperclip apocalypse”
thought-experiment and entertainingly simulated in the Universal Paperclips
computer game. It is also, of course, heartily derided as implausible and
alarmist by both the tech industry and AI researchers. One expert in the field
famously joked that he worried about super-intelligent machines in the same way
that he fretted about overpopulation on Mars.
But for
anyone who thinks that living in a world dominated by super-intelligent
machines is a “not in my lifetime” prospect, here’s a salutary thought: we
already live in such a world! The AIs in question are called corporations. They
are definitely super-intelligent, in that the collective IQ of the humans they
employ dwarfs that of ordinary people and, indeed, often of governments. They
have immense wealth and resources. Their lifespans greatly exceed that of mere
humans. And they exist to achieve one overriding objective: to increase and
thereby maximise shareholder value. In order to achieve that they will
relentlessly do whatever it takes, regardless of ethical considerations, collateral
damage to society, democracy or the planet.
One such
super-intelligent machine is called Facebook. And here to illustrate that last
point is an unambiguous statement of its overriding objective written by one of
its most senior executives, Andrew Bosworth, on 18 June 2016: “We connect
people. Period. That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the
questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps
people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we have to do to bring more
communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of
it.”
As William
Gibson famously observed, the future’s already here – it’s just not evenly
distributed.
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