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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday February 03 2018, @09:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the modern-day-punishment dept.

Fire good. AI better:

Google CEO Sundar Pichai says artificial intelligence is going to have a bigger impact on the world than some of the most ubiquitous innovations in history. "AI is one of the most important things humanity is working on. It is more profound than, I dunno, electricity or fire," says Pichai, speaking at a town hall event in San Francisco in January.

A number of very notable tech leaders have made bold statements about the potential of artificial intelligence. Tesla boss Elon Musks says AI is more dangerous than North Korea. Famous physicist Stephen Hawking says AI could be the "worst event in the history of our civilization." And Y Combinator President Sam Altman likens AI to nuclear fission.

Even in such company, Pichai's comment seems remarkable. Interviewer and Recode executive editor Kara Swisher stopped Pichai when he made the comment. "Fire? Fire is pretty good," she retorts. Pichai sticks by his assertion. "Well, it kills people, too," Pichai says of fire. "We have learned to harness fire for the benefits of humanity but we had to overcome its downsides too. So my point is, AI is really important, but we have to be concerned about it."

Also at CNN and Gizmodo.


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by frojack on Saturday February 03 2018, @10:04PM (1 child)

    by frojack (1554) on Saturday February 03 2018, @10:04PM (#632686) Journal

    Neither electricity nor fire had the ability or the potential to control mankind.

    While each could run wild for short durations, both run out of resources by themselves, and are easily starved of resources by humans.

    We've been scaring ourselves with stories about run-away AI for decades, so we clearly suspect it could happen.
    Yet we just can't seem to help ourselves from building skynet one piece at a time.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @07:02AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @07:02AM (#632839)

    I'm certain there have been hundreds of scary stories about fire demons/gods burning the world to a crisp.
    In fact "burn in hell" is still routinely used as a curse, and "hell" itself is a place where fire is everywhere (although I can't claim any self-awareness is awarded to fire in this particular picture).
    thousands of years ago, when science had no understanding of fire, there would have been nothing crazy about suggesting that fire will one day decide to stop collaborating with humans.

    In this sense, I see no difference between making a large open fire in a dry savanah to working with AI in a setting where it can evade human control.
    what's your self-aware computer going to do? it can at most play a very loud sound. until you unplug it and reformat the drive.

    keep the fucking weapon systems off the internet, and AI will NOT have the potential to ever take over.