Research Reveals Startling Possibility of an AI-Driven Apocalypse
Artificial intelligence (AI) has gained global attention, particularly since the emergence of ChatGPT in November. Since then, generative AI has rapidly advanced, with daily announcements of new breakthroughs. Our daily lives are already intertwined with technologies like virtual assistants, speech recognition, and machine learning, subtly assisting us. The movie ‘Her’ exemplifies this, portraying an AI virtual assistant aiding Joaquin Phoenix in overcoming loneliness. However, not everything is positive, as concerns arise about the consequences of AI’s rapid growth if left unchecked. Current risks include job displacement, human complacency, and even manipulation of elections. This is exemplified by Suumit Shah, founder of an e-commerce company, who replaced 90 percent of support staff with an AI customer service assistant. Yet, the future may hold even more sinister challenges.
While The Terminator may have been an unrealistic 80s sci-fi movie with cyborg assassins and doomsday, the threat of Skynet may well come true as sentient AI poses existential risks and sparks a possible apocalypse.
But will it ever happen? Extinction risk experts, super forecasters and scientists may have the answer.
Predicting the AI apocalypse
A report in The Economist on research led by Chicago Fed economist Ezra Karger and University of Pennsylvania political scientist Philip Tetlock sheds light on the artificial apocalypse. intelligence. In an article published on July 10, the researchers conducted a survey of two groups of people.
On the one hand, there were experts related to nuclear war, the extinction of artificial intelligence and bioweapons, on the other hand, “super forecasters”, people who make predictions based on statistical data. They were asked to rate the likelihood of a potential catastrophe or apocalypse caused by events such as AI coups, bioweapon attacks, and nuclear wars. Shockingly, experts in the field gave the highest doom and gloom probabilities, with more than 20 percent of them predicting a possible catastrophe by 2100 and 6 percent predicting extinction. On the other hand, the super forecasters gave these events a 9 percent and 1 percent probability.
But is it because of artificial intelligence? 12 percent of experts believe this because they predict the technology’s catastrophic effects. 3 percent of them even predicted the complete extinction of our species. Super forecasters, on the other hand, have envisioned a lesser impact of AI, with only 2.1 percent of them speculating that AI will cause a catastrophe, while only 0.38 percent believe that it could cause the extinction of the human race.
What about in the near future?
Although the possibility of AI’s global extinction can be speculated in perhaps 1000 years, it still poses risks that threaten our near future. As technology develops, it may put jobs at risk, and it is already doing so. According to the World Economic Forum’s “The Future of Jobs Report 2020″, artificial intelligence could replace up to 85 million jobs worldwide by 2025. The “godfather” of artificial intelligence, Geoffrey Hinton, had even left his position at Google, citing the effects of artificial intelligence on jobs as the reason behind his resignation.
But will AI bring destruction like Skynet did? For now, we can only hope that we learn to incorporate this technology into our lives without letting it really take over.
