> The machines are not on the verge of taking over. This is a topic rife with speculation and perhaps a whiff of hysteria.
People like Musk, Hawking, Gates, etc. with vast A.I. resources and knowledge available to them state that "A.I. [Cambrian] explosion" is likely to occur, and that it could mean the end of humanity.
Ray Kurzweil, with a degree in computer science from MIT, inventor of many prolific technologies, known for his startlingly accurate (esp in the temporal sense) predictions about technology, and hired by one of the largest tech companies in the world to create a computer "brain" and bring a new understanding to NLP, thinks this future is inevitable, although he's more optimistic about such a future.
Isaac Asimov, with a PhD in biochemistry, and one of the great thinkers of the 20th century, was concerned about A.I. long before it was even a possibility, considering the state of computer technology in the 1950s.
But hey, a Washington Post reporter with a degree in politics says it's all OK, so I guess we're good.
AI has fairly consistently overpromised and underdelivered. That's one reason the field crashed in the 80s/90s. Marvin Minsky thought we'd have human level AI in the 1970s. None of the people you mentioned are neuroscientists either. I consider Kurzweil a crackpot.
Bill Gates, Musk, etc are going to lose a fair bit of their power, prestige and wealth when someone does finally create super intelligence - Windows and Space X are great but those achievement will be dwarfed by whoever comes up with "superintelligence"
Ray Kurzweil's optimism comes from the fact that he will be unemployed if the govt bans A.I research.
And someone who works as a day journalist needs to make sure they meet the daily quote of generating clickbait traffic - its easiest to do it by writing something that is counter to whatever viewpoint is trendy this month.
Looking at history and how humanity dealt with technology - its fairly impossible to enforce any form of restriction on AI research.
We cannot stop >100,000 individuals from taking over an area larger than ireland in the middle east - good luck stopping the maths whiz with a pen.
I generally agree that there isn't much we can do to stop it, and I also think that trying too hard could backfire in unexpected ways, but certainly it's not something that this reporter, who is not very well informed on the matter, can correctly dismiss as hysteria.
People like Musk, Hawking, Gates, etc. with vast A.I. resources and knowledge available to them state that "A.I. [Cambrian] explosion" is likely to occur, and that it could mean the end of humanity.
Ray Kurzweil, with a degree in computer science from MIT, inventor of many prolific technologies, known for his startlingly accurate (esp in the temporal sense) predictions about technology, and hired by one of the largest tech companies in the world to create a computer "brain" and bring a new understanding to NLP, thinks this future is inevitable, although he's more optimistic about such a future.
Isaac Asimov, with a PhD in biochemistry, and one of the great thinkers of the 20th century, was concerned about A.I. long before it was even a possibility, considering the state of computer technology in the 1950s.
But hey, a Washington Post reporter with a degree in politics says it's all OK, so I guess we're good.