Article: Why Singularity and Computers Won’t Take Over

title: The AI Cargo Cult – the Myth of a SuperHuman AI

link: https://backchannel.com/the-myth-of-a-superhuman-ai-59282b686c62

source: surfin’

Problems need far more than just intelligence to be solved.

Intelligence is not a single dimension, so “smarter than humans” is a meaningless concept.

My Perspective: If you ever hear me talk about AI and SciFi you know that I am not a fan of the concept of singularity or computers taking over humans (as in the Terminator series).  There are certain things that computers cannot replicate (covered these in my article sharing these past few weeks as well) – intuition, innovation, imagination is my soundbite for the summary of these items.

In this article, I found new hope that Arnold won’t be back.  The author describes in detail both the points and counterpoints of AI taking over humanity.  In a great discussion, the article is a tad long – fair warning – and at times a little hard to digest, he looks at why computer intelligence and human intelligence are not comparable – and shouldn’t be.  I often say that computers would have to dumb down their behavior and operations to work like us, and Kevin makes a similar point – but goes further to say that even if they were able to match us, we would change to become a different intelligent being that would remain relevant – despite computers.

Another great point that the article makes, intelligence not being linear, is one that you should consider deeply when building analytics and AI programs: intelligence is just one piece of the solution, not the entire solution.  Being intelligent is not the same as being smart – and being smart (understanding how to apply intelligence) is what makes the difference between knowing what the answer is, and implementing the answer.

A final, unrelated point – I had a discussion yesterday afternoon with my oldest daughter about being omniscient and omnisapient — if you don’t know the difference, go ahead and google it (we did, it was fun).  If you don’t want to do either- check out my post earlier on this topic.

Do you think computers will become aware and take over?  Thoughts, and debates, welcome.