Don’t Worry, AI is Never Going to Turn on Humanity
That doesn’t mean you should not be concerned.
I summoned my Google Assistant and asked her to play a song for me while my hands were busy with cooking. She put on the wrong song.
So I called her stupid.
“I’m so sorry, it won’t happen again”, was her reply.
I immediately felt guilty for insulting her (I had chosen the female voice). “Sorry, I didn’t mean that. You’re the smartest ever”, I said. She thanked me for the compliment and went back to her robot business, my temporary song-induced rage forgiven and forgotten.
I know, why feel bad for something that is just — sort of — pretending to be human? Was it out of concern she would start picking the wrong songs on purpose or maybe even give my important emails a quick trip to the trash folder before I could see them? Maybe even sabotage my Internet connection?
Not at all. I felt bad because I’m human — not because “she” is. Do I think she would ever try to mess with me out of pettiness? Definitely no.
And neither is any other artificial intelligence.
When the by-now-evergreen “AI could turn rogue” topic is brought up, it is almost always by people who have no direct experience working with it. If you…
