Re:‘Artificial Intelligence’ Was the Fake News of 2016
by YeGoblynQueenne on Monday January 02, 2017 @12:12PM
(#13302476)
What a badly edited article. If this is the counterpoint to the hype there's no wonder the hype train is currently slingshotting around Neptune.
Still, the points they're trying to make are fair, especially this bit:
>> Out in the real world, people want better service, not worse service; more human and less robotic exchanges with services, not more robotic "post-human" exchanges.
And that's the risk to AI's future in a nutshell: artificial stupidity has the potential to make our lives miserable like natural stupidity never has.
And that's no mistake. The danger in AI is not that it will become smarter than ourselves and take over the world (where Pinky and the Brain failed). The risk is that it will remain dumber than cabbages and still take over the world, as we fall over ourselves to automate everything humans do, even the things that don't get better with more automation, until we're all left without a job, standing in a long line to speak to an AI assistant to get our food stamps for the AI food dispenser.
Just an hour ago I was on the phone with a public service. The answering system's speech recognition worked just fine- it parsed my 11-digit Customer Reference Number despite my Greek accent. It did the job better than a human- those 11-digit numbers are not meant for humans anyway! Still, it kept asking me to press numbers to choose options- why didn't it ask me to speak those aloud? And at the end of the line, when all the options ran out, and only then, it let me know that the offices were closed for the holidays and I should call again tomorrow- Byyye!
Is that natural, or artificial, stupidity? One way or another, it's a picture of the future: imagine a 1000-page form in triplicate, stamping on a human face, forever.
Still, the points they're trying to make are fair, especially this bit:
>> Out in the real world, people want better service, not worse service; more human and less robotic exchanges with services, not more robotic "post-human" exchanges.
And that's the risk to AI's future in a nutshell: artificial stupidity has the potential to make our lives miserable like natural stupidity never has.
And that's no mistake. The danger in AI is not that it will become smarter than ourselves and take over the world (where Pinky and the Brain failed). The risk is that it will remain dumber than cabbages and still take over the world, as we fall over ourselves to automate everything humans do, even the things that don't get better with more automation, until we're all left without a job, standing in a long line to speak to an AI assistant to get our food stamps for the AI food dispenser.
Just an hour ago I was on the phone with a public service. The answering system's speech recognition worked just fine- it parsed my 11-digit Customer Reference Number despite my Greek accent. It did the job better than a human- those 11-digit numbers are not meant for humans anyway! Still, it kept asking me to press numbers to choose options- why didn't it ask me to speak those aloud? And at the end of the line, when all the options ran out, and only then, it let me know that the offices were closed for the holidays and I should call again tomorrow- Byyye!
Is that natural, or artificial, stupidity? One way or another, it's a picture of the future: imagine a 1000-page form in triplicate, stamping on a human face, forever.