Entrepreneur and business executive, founder of Mindleap Health and advisor to disruptive technology companies.
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Artificial intelligence is already impacting virtually every industry and every human being. This incredible technology has brought many good and questionable things into our lives, and it will create an even bigger impact in the next two decades.
According to Ray Kurzweil, one of the most-known futurists, computers will have the same level of intelligence as humans by 2029. Kurzweil stated to Futurism, "2029 is the consistent date I have predicted for when an AI will pass a valid Turing test and therefore achieve human levels of intelligence. I have set the date 2045 for the 'Singularity' which is when we will multiply our effective intelligence a billion fold by merging with the intelligence we have created."
However remarkable this technology may be, it doesn't come without some major concerns for humanity. Movies like Ex Machina, Transcendence and Her show us the dark side of AI reaching human-level consciousness. There have also been some serious concerns coming from scientists, politicians and technologists that should not be taken lightly.
AI will make most people better off, but its advances will also affect what it truly means to be human in the 21st century. This article explores the juxtaposition of the risks and benefits of what is about to come.
The Bright Side Of The AI Future
• Precision medicine. AI is currently in use to understand how a person's genetics, environment and lifestyle can help determine the best approach to prevent or treat a certain disease. Digital therapeutics, custom-designed drugs and improved diagnosis are already making treatments more affordable, accessible, accurate and are helping humans live longer and healthier lives.
• Driverless cars. Deep learning excels at tasks involving pattern recognition, and modern cars will be better than humans when it comes to perception, prediction and planning on the fly. IEEE Spectrum noted that one forecast has autonomous cars handling 70% of all miles driven by 2035. Fatal driving accidents are projected to drop dramatically as autonomous vehicles become mainstream and make deaths from driver error a thing of the past.
• Virtual assistants. AI virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa and other programs that use natural language processing to understand and perform tasks given by humans are taking off. Voice technology is already making life easier and is in wide use, but it will play a far more critical part in our lives in the future when virtual assistants are connected to robots and are part of the singularity.
• Implantables. The wide adoption of brain-machine interfaces will lead to a massive expansion of human intelligence and could allow humans to solve many medical conditions including paralysis, blindness, anxiety and addiction. Using implantables to reprogram underlying human biology can allow us to augment and upgrade ourselves in a few short years. For example, a monkey with implants in his brain made by Elon Musk's company, Neuralink, is now able to play Pong using just his thoughts. Imagine what humans could be able to do once this is commercialized.
The Dark Side Of The AI Future
• Mass surveillance. The broad use of AI by big technology companies has brought upon the destruction of digital privacy. China's social credit system expands that surveillance to not only the digital world but to all aspects of life, judging citizens' behavior and trustworthiness and placing draconian control on their population. With the advent of the Covid-19 passports, many fear that this is the first step toward rolling out this type of control across the Western world.
• Modern warfare. In the next big war, AI could be the determining factor between winning and losing. With unmanned underwater vehicles, constellations of smart robotic devices, drones, robots and precision-guided missiles, modern warfare supremacy will be decided by technology. Robots are quicker, stronger, more accurate and follow orders much better than humans and could make soldiers obsolete.
• Massive job losses. Udacity CEO Gabe Dalporto told Time that he estimates a billion people will lose their jobs due to AI by 2030 and that the Covid-19 pandemic has only accelerated this trend. In terms of scale, these widespread job losses could rival the move away from agricultural labor during the 1900s in the United States and Europe. Unfortunately, this technological trend is inevitable, and it will likely increase inequality and place power in the hands of a few.
• Socioeconomic inequality. With millions of low-skill to medium-skill jobs gone, the income gap between middle-skill and high-skill labor will be enormous. According to the U.N., "71% of the world's population live in countries where inequality has grown," and "the share of income going to the top 1% of the global population increased in 46 out of 57 countries with data." A scenario of the class-based divide between the masses who work for algorithms, a privileged technology class that designs and trains algorithmic systems and an ultra-wealthy aristocracy that owns the algorithms is not too far-fetched.
Bottom Line
With the pace of technology innovation ever increasing, it is important to be aware of the upcoming disruptions and not just blindly enjoy the benefits that AI brings. Computer superintelligence could threaten our very existence, and even if it doesn't, there are still big issues that need to be resolved if we can responsibly bring forth the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
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