Machine age

This week the future came to Las VegasA city in the desert of Nevada, USA. It is known for its casinos and gambling culture. . The tech world flocked to the desert city for the Consumer Electronics Show, a gigantic exhibition of new technologies. Artificial intelligenceArtificial intelligence, or "AI," is the ability for a computer to think and learn. With AI, computers can perform tasks that are typically done by people, including processing language, problem-solving, and learning. (AI) took the limelight.

There were AI-powered laptops, phones and webcams. Star exhibits included a grill that learns to cook better over time, a device for translating a baby's cries and a toothbrush which gives you feedback.

SAG-AFTRAThe Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists is an American union for media professionals. struck a deal to allow the company Replica to use electronic imitations of its actors' voices, just months after they had called a strike over fears of AI-generated actors.¹

This could be the year of AI. FuturistA person who specialises in making predictions about the future based on current trends.  Tom Cheesewright says 2024 will see it have "a greater impact and a greater reach into more people's lives".

The most eagerly anticipated advance is OpenAIAn American artificial intelligence company. It says its mission is to "benefit all of humanity". 's ChatGPTAn Artificial Intelligence chatbot released in November 2022. -5, rumoured to arrive this year. When ChatGPT-4 was launched last March, it made headlines with its ability to compose soundalike songs, summarise technical documents and hold conversations.

OpenAI CEOThe Chief Executive Officer is the highest ranking person in a company. They are responsible for making decisions about the company's future. Sam Altman has suggested the next stage might be a superintelligence: an AI with intelligence far surpassing even the greatest human genius.

A superintelligent smartphone could automatically change our home's temperature, identify objects through a camera lens and translate languages in real-time. It might even be able to read our emotions based on how we speak and talk.

Many are giddy with the possibilities. AI is an amazing machine for humans to control. Yet some worry that they will escape our control, like Frankenstein's monsterIn Mary Shelley's novel, Victor Frankenstein creates a living monster from the dismembered body parts of corpses..

Last year, a member of the US Air Force reported² a simulation in which an AI decided to kill its human operator to help accomplish its mission.³ Recent film The Creator begins with an AI deciding to drop a nuclear bomb on Los Angeles.

Others are anxious that these amazing machines will control humans. Last March, over 1,000 tech leaders wrote an open letter begging for a pause in AI development. They claimed it poses "profound risks to society and humanity" if not strongly regulated.⁴

The risks are not only violent. AI might become so indispensable that they take over much of our lives. We could come to rely on them for basic needs, falling under their control in the process. In the 2013 film Her, most humans have become emotionally dependent on human-like AIs. 

Many believe the fears are overblown. No-one has provided a clear explanation of, in economist James Broughel's words, "how the world goes from chatbots answering questions on the internet to literally the end of the human race". DoomsdayThe end of the world. predictions distract us from thinking about more immediate issues, such as AI's effects on jobs.

AI does not act alone. The World Economic Forum has identified AI-derived misinformation as the worst risk to society. As consultant Carolina Klint writes: "AI can build out models for influencing large populations of voters". A political party could flood social media with AI-generated deepfakesThis technique uses artificial intelligence to change the identity of a person in an image or a video - or to make it appear that a person is saying or doing something that they never said or did. of its opponents.⁵ The real worry might not be AI itself but how people use it.

Is this good news?

Yes: The capabilities of AI are dizzying. By taking control of our most mundane tasks, they will free up our time to dream bigger, to find solutions to the world's problems and evolve our own abilities.

No: It does not matter whether AI wants to kill us or not. Just as homo sapiens out-competed the neanderthals and led to their demise, superintelligent AI will eventually supersede us.

Or... The real news is not AI but the power that it gives people. Companies like OpenAI have the ability to change the world more than any elected politician. We should restrict AI to curb its creators.