Monday, March 20, 2023
Topic: Media
Content Type: Opinion
Keywords:
What Star Trek can Teach us About the Dangers of AI
In an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Data (a robot, for the uninitiated) was testing his skills with a virtual recreation of a Sherlock Holmes mystery. However, because he had devoured all of the stories of Sherlock Holmes, he solved each mystery effortlessly and instantaneously. To create a challenge, they instructed the computer to create a new mystery and increased the difficulty by asking for an adversary that could defeat Data, and not Sherlock Holmes. Because Data is basically a computer with knowledge of technology and science up to the 24th century, they had inadvertently created a super-intelligent AI.
Thankfully, Data managed to defeat this amplified Moriarty, but Star Trek incidentally hit on the most significant threat that artificial intelligence poses--the threat of poorly thought-out programming.
Most people who fear a super-intelligent AI imagine a malevolent, super-intelligent force like Skynet, the Machines, Hal, and Linguo, but the more likely doomsday scenario is a neutral (or even benevolent) super intelligence programmed by a human being. Even the smartest person in the world is subject to errors in judgment and foresight. It is a risk that would always be present because no human being is capable of gaming out every potentiality.
If you have read any stories about AI, in light of Chat GPT, and the arms race of AI development that ensued, you may have come across a reference to maximizing paper clips. This is a commonly cited nightmare scenario where an AI is programmed to manufacture as many paperclips as it can, and it ends up destroying humanity, the Earth, the solar system, and the entire universe fulfilling its programming turning all matter and energy into paperclips. I first was made aware of this scenario by reading Our Final Invention, and consequently suggest you also read it if you're interested in this topic.
Competition is supercharging the development of AI, and we would be wise to heed the lessons from Star Trek and take care to build in systems to prevent this powerful technology falling prey to the carelessness that accompanies a corporate drive for staying ahead of the competition.