Academia and Hollywood can typically be seen as two worlds.
Leisure vs intelligence.
Superficial and shallow vs deep considering.
They could not sit in the identical restaurant or bar. However they will each provide insights into the longer term. Each science fiction and common tradition can encourage the longer term.
The Dick Tracy cartoon detective created by Chester Gould in 1931 and the sensible watch as showing in 1946 within the collection is one instance.
“The Jetsons” that first aired in 1962 was one other instance of creativeness driving innovations. Entrepreneurs that learn cartoons or watched these reveals have been impressed to create the longer term.
Lecturers and AI
This 12 months I had the pleasure of interviewing Nick Bostrom on my podcast “The Jeff Bullas Present”.
Nick is an instructional and a polymath professor from Oxford College who has written two bestselling books on AI. His first ebook titled “Superintelligence: Paths, Risks, Methods” is a dystopian perspective of the way forward for a world residing with AI.
His second ebook “Deep Utopia: Life and Which means in a Solved World“ took one other perspective that embraced a utopian imaginative and prescient. Each books have been pleasant, insightful and revealing.
Tutorial perception is one factor however what does that imply for mere mortals? And what does common tradition take into consideration AI?
Hollywood and AI
Hollywood is the middle of the world’s film trade and an influencer of common tradition globally. It has additionally formed our excited about AI and common tradition. What the trade has additionally labored out is summed up with the quote about common media: “If it bleeds it leads”.
This implies that information shops, movie studios (and media normally) prioritize sensational, typically violent tales as a result of they appeal to probably the most viewers or readers. Dystopia is what leads the eye and a utopian story will secede.
Within the final 10 years, it’s estimated that the worldwide income of the American movie trade reached $300 – $400 billion. The height simply earlier than Covid reached $42.5 billion in 2019. Its motion pictures cowl many classes together with science fiction. And underneath that label AI has performed an element.
One of many first motion pictures that made a serious impression is “2001: A House Odyssey” launched in 1968 that was directed by Stanley Kubrick, and it’s about an AI robotic that takes over a spaceship.
It hinted at a dystopian future the place humanity is managed by machines. That perspective is now woven into what has nearly develop into an innate concern of AI.
So most of the questions we’re asking in 2024 about AI are based mostly upon a conditioning of the impression of AI in our lives through media that we devour on a regular basis. So is it dystopian or utopian? Pessimists will lean a technique and optimists one other.
Is the way forward for AI heaven or hell?
So, here’s a compilation of dystopian and utopian quotes about AI from notable people – individuals who write about historical past, scientists, technologists, philosophers or polymaths, entrepreneurs or CEOs, authors or just anybody who has an curiosity in AI.
Dystopian quotes about AI (Hell)
Top-of-the-line quotes is from Elon Musk (who leads the record) and who was one of many co-founders of Open AI. He stepped down from the board in 2018 and appears to have just lately regretted his determination when ChatGPT in 2022 turned a world phenomenon.
So regardless of his dystopian feedback and the open sore of his bleeding remorse, he has just lately launched a variety of AI merchandise together with utilizing it throughout the social media platform “X” and beginning a competitor to ChatGPT with the model title of “Grok”.
He’s typically a dystopian quote machine that can be utopian leaning when promoting the imaginative and prescient of people residing on Mars. Being a profitable entrepreneur who’s altering the world and who additionally leads the race to being a headline winner for hypocrisy, is a good instance of searching for consideration first as a PR tactic after which doing the other second.
Jogs my memory of an individual with the surname beginning with “T”.
- Elon Musk: “AI is a elementary existential danger for human civilization, and I don’t suppose folks absolutely recognize that.”
- Stephen Hawking: “The event of full synthetic intelligence might spell the top of the human race.”
- Invoice Gates: “I’m within the camp that’s involved about tremendous intelligence.”
- Nick Bostrom: “Earlier than the prospect of an intelligence explosion, we people are like young children enjoying with a bomb.”
- James Barrat: “A superintelligent AI can be extraordinarily good at engaging in its targets, and if these targets aren’t aligned with ours, now we have an issue.”
- Max Tegmark: “By far the best hazard of Synthetic Intelligence is that folks conclude too early that they perceive it.”
- Pleasure Buolamwini: “When the one that is highly effective is creating techniques, they’re creating it for folks like themselves.”
- Sam Harris: “We’re within the strategy of constructing some kind of god. Now could be an excellent time to verify it’s a god we are able to dwell with.”
- Ted Kaczynski: “AI would possibly convey a couple of scenario the place people are obliged to develop into the slaves of the machines.”
- Joseph Weizenbaum: “AI is a machine with no soul.”
Utopian quotes about AI (Heaven)
Utopia is a spot the place all of us maintain fingers, pat lions and hug bears and heaven is our house. Different phrases which can be synonyms for utopia embody nirvana and paradise. Some religions even promise the lads 100 virgins in the event that they die and go to paradise. Undecided that may be a heaven I’m comfortable about.
AI typically guarantees a future world that’s enhanced by know-how. The fact about AI is that it isn’t synthetic. It’s the intelligence and the creativity of humanity curated and picked up and enabled by the machines and know-how created by people.
Perhaps we should always begin utilizing the phrase “Enhanced Intelligence” or “EI”, as a substitute of AI.
- Mark Zuckerberg: “AI goes to ship so many enhancements within the high quality of our lives.”
- Ray Kurzweil: “AI will attain human ranges by round 2029. Observe that out additional to, say, 2045, we may have multiplied the intelligence, the human organic machine intelligence of our civilization a billion-fold.”
- Andrew Ng: “AI is the brand new electrical energy.”
- Fei-Fei Li: “If we are able to democratize AI know-how within the wider society, in a whole bunch of hundreds of purposes, each particular person generally is a person of AI.”
- Geoffrey Hinton: “AI will assist us to make folks’s lives simpler.”
- Demis Hassabis: “AI can be one of the crucial helpful applied sciences of mankind ever.”
- Ginni Rometty: “The AI will see patterns in knowledge that no human might see.”
- Eric Schmidt: “AI would be the most vital transformation within the subsequent decade.”
- Sundar Pichai: “AI might be crucial factor humanity has ever labored on. I consider it as one thing extra profound than electrical energy or fireplace.“
- Sebastian Thrun: “We’re going to see machines that aren’t simply going to reinforce our skills however will actually maintain us in probably the most artistic methods.”
These quotes spotlight the polarized views on AI from a few of the main thinkers in know-how and science.
However what must be considered is that this isn’t fact however opinion. The fact is that the reality lies someplace within the center.
Utopia beckons and dystopia threatens.
It’s as much as you whether or not you lean into the longer term or embrace the previous.
