Should you feel bad about pulling the plug on a robot or switch off an Artificial Intelligence algorithm? Not for the moment. But how about when our computers become as smart—or smarter—than us?
Debates about the consequences of artificial general intelligence (AGI) are almost as old as the history of AI itself. Most discussions depict the future of Artificial Intelligence as either Terminator-like apocalypse or Wall-E-like utopia. But what’s less discussed is how we will perceive, interact with, and accept artificial intelligence agents when they develop traits of life, intelligence, and consciousness.
In a recently published essay, Borna Jalsenjak, scientist at Zagreb School of Economics and Management, discusses super-intelligent AI and analogies between biological and artificial life. Titled “The Artificial Intelligence Singularity: What It Is and What It Is Not,” his work appears in Guide to Deep Learning Basics, a collection of papers and treatises that explore various historic, scientific, and philosophical aspects of artificial intelligence.
Jalsenjak takes us through the philosophical anthropological view of life and how it applies to AI systems that can evolve through their own manipulations. He argues that “thinking machines” will emerge when AI develops its own version of “life,” and leaves us with some food for thought about the more obscure and vague aspects of the future of artificial intelligence.
Singularity is a term that comes up often in discussions about general AI. And as is wont with everything that has to do with AGI, there’s a lot of confusion and disagreement on what the singularity is. But a key thing that most scientists and philosophers agree that it is a turning point where our AI systems become smarter than ourselves. Another important aspect of the singularity is time and speed: AI systems will reach a point where they can self-improve in a recurring and accelerating fashion.
“Said in a more succinct way, once there is an AI which is at the level of human beings and that AI can create a slightly more intelligent AI, and then that one can create an even more intelligent AI, and then the next one creates even more intelligent one and it continues like that until there is an AI which is remarkably more advanced than what humans can achieve,” Jalsenjak writes.
To be clear, the artificial intelligence technology we have today, known as narrow AI, is nowhere near achieving such feat. Jalšenjak describes current AI systems as “domain-specific” such as “AI which is great at making hamburgers but is not good at anything else.” On the other hand, the kind of algorithms that is the discussion of AI singularity is “AI that is not subject-specific, or for the lack of a better word, it is domainless and as such it is capable of acting in any domain,” Jalsenjak writes.
This is not a discussion about how and when we’ll reach AGI. That’s a different topic, and also a focus of much debate, with most scientists in the belief that human-level artificial intelligence is at least decades away. Jalsenjack rather speculates of how the identity of AI (and humans) will be defined when we actually get there, whether it be tomorrow or in a century.
There’s great tendency in the AI community to view machines as humans, especially as they develop capabilities that show signs of intelligence. While that is clearly an overestimation of today’s technology, Jasenjak also reminds us that artificial general intelligence does not necessarily have to be a replication of the human mind.
