Thread by @thetimes

British computer scientist Stuart Russell has predicted success in creating superintelligent AI “would be the biggest event in human history… and perhaps the last event in human history” thetimes.co.uk/article/is-the…

AI could lead us into a golden age, where we can enjoy lives that are no longer burdened by drudgery. Or it could destroy us as a species. Even if we learn to live with superintelligent machines, they may take all our jobs or create mayhem on battlefields thetimes.co.uk/article/we-sho…

The creation of a superintelligent AI, which Russell has likened to the arrival of a superior alien civilisation (but more likely), is an enormous challenge and a long way off

But many experts believe it could happen in the next few decades, and Russell is an evangelist for the need to prepare for such an eventuality thetimes.co.uk/article/can-th…

The danger, Russell suggests, is that our relationship with machines becomes analogous to the relationship gorillas have with us today. We had a common ancestor but “once humans came along, and they’re this much more intelligent than gorillas and chimpanzees, then game over

🗣️“We have to build machines a different way [so that] they are trying to achieve whatever our objective is but they know that there may be other things we care about”

🗣️“So if we say, ‘I’d like a cup of tea,’ that doesn’t mean you can mow down all the other people at Starbucks to get to the front of the line”

🗣️ “The machine must be devised so it will always allow us to turn it off. Otherwise, its logical conclusion would be to deactivate its “off” switch in order to eliminate an obvious threat to completing the task”

Even if machines don’t take over the planet and eradicate us and we find a way to stay in control, living with them may present enormous challenges. What happens when they can do all – or, at least, the vast majority – of the roles that fill our working days?

For many millennia, Russell points out, most humans have been in “robot” jobs; if they are released from agricultural, industrial and clerical roles by real robots it could transform human existence

🗣️ “If all goes well, it will herald a golden age for humanity. Our civilisation is the result of our intelligence, and having access to much greater intelligence could enable a much better civilisation”

How worried is he that his children or any future grandchildren will face a dystopian future with AI?

🗣️“It doesn’t feel like a visceral fear. It feels like climate change”

But in the worst-case scenario AI would be terminal for our species, whereas with climate change we could probably cling on in the last temperate corners of the world. Russel believes in the worst case AI could be worse than global warming.

🗣️“If the machines really are more intelligent than us and we’ve made a mistake and set them up to pursue objectives that end up having these disastrous side effects, we would have no more power than chess players have when they are playing against the best chess programmes”