AI might just live up to all the hype one day
1AI might just live up to all the hype one day.
If AI isn’t the most hyped technology of the 21st century, it’s certainly right up there with earlier manias for mobile, virtual reality, the internet of things, and big data. Companies large and small feel pressure to claim they use AI in some key way to drive their business.
But does AI deserve this level of hype? On one end of the spectrum are the doomsayers (including heavyweights like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk) who see the technology posing an existential threat to the future of humanity. In contrast, there are those who see AI as the breakthrough that could solve many of the world’s most intractable problems. Visionary Ray Kurzweil believes AI will soon enhance virtually everyone’s mental capabilities. Musk’s own startup, Neuralink, is reportedly developing a brain-to-machine interface that could improve memory or allow for more direct interfacing with computing devices.
Reading recent media coverage of AI induces forecasting schizophrenia, making it difficult to determine what is real and where the technology is headed. For example, here are two recent article titles from the same week: “AI image recognition fooled by single pixel change” (due to “adversarial images”) and “AI and Machine Learning to Revolutionize U.S. Intelligence Community.” We must hope that the Pentagon will be able to overcome adversarial images so that it can correctly differentiate a stealth bomber from a dog.
This discrepancy points to a broader truth about AI. While the technology has come far, the singularity — the point in time at which machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence — remains a long way off. Kurzweil believes this will occur in the next 30 years. Similarly, Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son predicts machines will surpass human intelligence by 2047.