Read more: “Instant Expert: Artificial intelligence“
The notion of the ultra-intelligent machine – one that can surpass human thinking on any subject – was introduced in 1965 by mathematician I. J. Good, who worked with Alan Turing at Bletchley Park, the UK’s centre for coding and code-breaking during the second world war. Good noted that “the first ultra-intelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make”, because from then on, the machines would be designing other, ever-better machines, and there would be no work left for humans to do.
Over the past decade or so, AI researcher Ray Kurzweil has further popularised this notion, calling it the technological singularity, or the tipping point at which ultra-intelligent machines so radically alter our society that we can’t predict how life will change afterwards.
In response, some have fearfully predicted that these intelligent machines will dispense with useless humans – mirroring the plot of The Matrix – while others see a utopian future filled with endless leisure.
Focusing on these equally unlikely outcomes has distracted the conversation from the very real societal effects already brought about by the increasing pace of technological change. For 100,000 years, we relied on the hard labour of small bands of hunter-gatherers. A scant 200 years ago we moved to an industrial society that shifted most manual labour to machines. And then, just one generation ago, we made the transition into the digital age. Today much of what we manufacture is information, not physical objects – bits, not atoms. Computers are ubiquitous tools, and much of our manual labour has been replaced by calculations.
A similar acceleration …