Should You Trust Your Computer?

Phil and Stephen discuss the new film by Chris Paine, director of “Who Killed the Electric Car?”

Do You Trust This Computer?
doyoutrustthiscomputer.org

This new documentary about the dangers and benefits of artificial intelligence (mostly the dangers) covers some serious subjects:

AI and weapons

Technology and Privacy issues

Emergence of superintelligence

Computers taking over

A great lineup of AI luminaries discuss some pretty grim scenarios for how our AI-driven future might turn out. Phil contrasts the tone of the film with a recent essay by another big name in AI, Kai Fu Lee:

We are here to create
goo.gl/G48v8h

All the dystopian talk is just nonsense. It’s too much imagination. We’re seeing AI going into new applications in what appears to be an exponential growth, but it's an exponential growth of applications of the mature technologies that exist. That growth will be over once we develop all of them. Then we have to wait for more breakthroughs for further advancement of AI. But you cannot predict further advancements.

Who is right? And if Kai is wrong, what do we do about this?

The film suggests “regulation” at the end, but there are big problems making that work.

The surprising answer may be that we should NOT trust our computers and therefore we MUST push on with Artificial Intelligence research. Strange as that may seem.

WT 424-737