Artificial Intelligence – Part Two – Skynet’s the limit

The final episode of our two-part story of Artificial Intelligence. Having looked at the emergence and development of AI in part one we now turn to the future and assess the dangers and possibilities it raises.

We weigh up two arguments concerning existential risk. Some AI theorists believe the technology has the possibility of becoming sentient and then behaving against humanity's interests. Others worry that it will simply deliver disastrous outcomes on the basis of badly established requests. For instance, if you ask a highly advanced machine to create paperclips, with no additional restrictions, it might end up killing everyone in its relentless pursuit of its task. Are either of these ideas remotely believable? Are they remotely likely?

Then we look at the possible repercussions of more modest outcomes. What happens when everyone on earth is equipped with their own genius machine, which can assess global corporate law in seconds, or make millions on Amazon Marketplace? Will we use it for good or ill? (Spoilers: It'll be bad) 

How confidently can we accept the predictions of AI theorists? Are they really right that this is all inevitable? Or is history, and technological development, far more chaotic and unpredictable than their models allow?

Finally, we look at the impact on humanity as we are all suddenly enveloped in AI art. Will an AI song ever move us to tears? And if so, what does that say about who we are and what we look for in the world?

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Reading List

Books

Susie Alegre - Human Rights, Robot Wrongs: Being human in the age of AI (2024)

Nick Bostrom – Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014)

Daniel Crevier – AI: The Tumultuous History of the Search for Artificial Intelligence (1993)

Pedro Domingos - The Master Algorithm: How the quest for the ultimate learning machine will remake the world (2015)

Max Fisher - The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World (2022)

Walter Isaacson – The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution (2014)

Dorian Lynskey – Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World (2024)

John Markoff - Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots (2015)

David G. Stork (ed.) – HAL’s Legacy: 2001’s Computer as Dream and Reality (1997)

Mustafa Suleyman with Michael Bhaskar – The Coming Wave: AI, Power and Our Future (2023)

Michael Woolridge – The Road to Conscious Machines: The Story of AI (2021)

Articles

Alan Turing – ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’, Mind (1950)

Brad Darrach – ‘Meet Shaky, the First Electronic Person’, Life (1970)

Jeremy Bernstein – ‘A.I.’, New Yorker (1981)

Raffi Khatchadourian – ‘The Doomsday Invention’, New Yorker (2015)

Ted Chiang – ‘Silicon Valley Is Tu