







From self-service checkouts in supermarkets with robotic assistants telling us to place items in the bagging area, to automatic messaging when we ring up call centres and fail to get through to a human voice, (1) concerns have long been made that the rise of artificial intelligence will mean humans become redundant from many jobs.Though fears that artificial intelligence may wipe out many human jobs have been somewhat enfeebled by claims that AI could lead to the entire human race vanishing within our lifetime.

According to (2) Jeff Nesbit, former director of legislative and public affairs at the National Science Foundation, the human race may no longer exist, or may become immortal by 2050.

Nesbit points to a theory known as ‘artificial super-intelligence’ (ASI), which speculates AI will evolve into a supercomputer, which, being able to learn at incredible quick speeds, will be able to solve all problems and surpass human intelligence.

Human Race Could Vanish

Writing for (3) US News, Jeff Nesbit put forward the alarming hypothesis that:

“The human race could vanish in the blink of an eye within our lifetimes. Or we could just as plausibly see our species become immortal by the middle of the 21st century. That’s the promise, and the threat, posed by the accelerating pace of research around artificial intelligence. It may be an either/or proposition.”

Nesbit describes some of the early benefits of AI, using Google Maps as an example. The author says the next stage of AI will be the development of a supercomputer which is capable of recreating human intelligence. The final evolution of AI is, according to Nesbit, is that ASI learns so quickly, it ‘soars’ past the intelligence abilities of ordinary humans and is able to solve every problem which mankind is faced with.

So, what’s wrong with super intelligent computers being able to solve the world’s problems we might ask? Well according to Nesbit there is a “dark” and “threatening” side to the AI story, which is only beginning to be publicly discussed.