Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google and executive chairman of Alphabet, recently talked about AI, arguing that AI will have a huge impact on humans, and this impact will be far deeper than the impact on humans through social media.
Schmidt told the Financial Times, "I don't think we understand the impact of social media on society – whether positive or negative. AI has the potential to have both positive and negative effects because of its ability to understand and target changes in people's behavior and belief systems. ”
In the early days of social media, no one thought these platforms would disrupt elections or affect every aspect of our lives, our views, and our actions. At the same time, Schmidt said in a statement that "artificial intelligence will prompt us to rethink what it means to be human, and as we plan our path for the future of artificial intelligence, we need to prepare in advance for possible unintended consequences." ”
According to Schmidt's thought, AI will have an impact on our lives, but it is not yet possible to determine whether AI is more beneficial than harmful to our lives or more harmful than beneficial, and we need to prepare in advance for the adverse effects of AI on humans. To this end, Schmidt will invest $125 million to establish the AI2050 Fund, which is mainly used to research AI, and will not be funded by enterprises.
University of Berkeley scholars Stuart Russell and Rediet Abebe were among the first to be named fellows. Abebe is investigating how AI can help measure and mitigate socioeconomic inequalities, while Russell is working on probabilistic programming designed to improve the interpretability, provability, and performance of AI.
The overall goal of the fund is to develop artificial intelligence that is more powerful, more versatile, safe and trusted by the public.
Worklist:
1. Solve the current scientific and technological limitations and problems of artificial intelligence
2. Solve the security, performance and output challenges of the evolving artificial intelligence
3. Addresses security and control, personnel adjustment, and with the growing power and ability of artificial intelligence and ultimately AGI
4. Make a game-changing contribution by having AI solve one or more of humanity's biggest problems
5. Solve the economic challenges and opportunities brought by artificial intelligence and related technologies
6. In the development of artificial intelligence and the growth of intelligent transportation systems, the problems of acquisition, participation and agency have been solved
7. Addresses the social technologies of responsible research, deployment, and ARTIFICIAL intelligence embedded in different social spaces and explain different cultures, actors, benefits, risks, social externalities, and markets and other forces
8. Addresses AI-related risks, use and misuse, competition, cooperation and coordination
9. Addresses the adaptive, co-evolving, and resilient infrastructure and capabilities of human governance institutions and societies to keep up with and harness advances in AI for the benefit of society
10. Solves the meaning of human beings in the era of artificial intelligence
In fact, AI has long been applied in various places in our daily lives, such as the mobile phones we use every day, and we have already learned our daily use through AI. Now major Android mobile phones have supported AI shooting, through AI beautification, optimization and so on.
Today, when the epidemic has not receded, many places have adopted AI robots for body temperature measurement, and to a large extent, AI has helped us reduce the danger during the epidemic. At present, the AI that we can access in our daily lives is more convenient for our lives.
Although AI is changing our lives, some business executives have expressed different ideas about AI:
In 2018, Musk said that the development of superintelligence, driven by companies or other human organizations, could give birth to a form of artificial intelligence that dominates the world.
Kai-Fu Lee: Everyone has to make themselves a more profound person, whether it is a journalist, a poet or a painter, if you write casually, it will definitely be replaced by AI.
Robin Li: With the open source and openness of artificial intelligence technology platforms, more and more applications can be easily developed to benefit all aspects of the economy and society.
Ma Huateng: We pursue science and technology for good, we must achieve AI for good, so that AI technology can be used, knowable and reliable, and our wisdom of making good use of AI must be better than the increasingly powerful AI wisdom.
In the future, AI will become our daily existence, and AI will be applied to all parts of our lives. Musk said humanoid robots will be very important to solve the labor shortage in the United States, and their first use will be Tesla's own factory. So AI will help us solve problems such as labor to some extent.
The convenience brought by AI is unattainable by manpower, and many companies around the world have developed AI, and AI chips such as NVIDIA have already been shipped worldwide.
But AI doesn't necessarily bring convenience to our daily lives, and as AI continues to evolve, AI will learn more about humans. Many people worry that AI may have emotions, thoughts, and may even replace humans when it is fully mature in the future.
So can we leave all the work of life to AI? The U.S. Department of Defense plans to invest nearly $1 billion in AI by 2022 and is currently working on more than 600 projects to integrate AI into the war.
War has been tactical since ancient times, and whether AI can read people's hearts or not be controlled by the enemy is unknown, so human intervention in AI may be correct. Although the United States is developing AI pilot fighters, AI pilots need to cooperate with human pilots to fly aircraft, and human pilots will play the role of "combat managers" and direct drones in the future.
Now, Schmidt's views and concerns about AI are not unreasonable. Artificial intelligence has proven to be a useful technology, and for the future of artificial intelligence, people's interests must be at the center of development. Humans must prevent the undesirable effects of AI before it fully intervenes in our lives.
AI researchers told CNBC last March that it doesn't make sense to impose strict rules on AI development at this stage, as the technology is still in its infancy and could slow progress in the field.
Jon Crowcroft, a computer scientist at the University of Cambridge, would like to see more investment to make AI systems interpretable. For now, humans don't know how or why many of today's most advanced AI players make the decisions they make.
Humans need to understand AI better, and AI needs to understand humans better. But there is a need for humanity to worry that AI may replace humans, or even destroy them. Until then, humans need to be prepared and let AI develop with human interests at its core.