Designing Our AI Future
The Need for Human-Centric Artificial Intelligence
If one term has captured the popular imagination of late, it’s artificial intelligence (AI). Depending on whom you ask, it’s either the panacea for humanity’s woes, or a harbinger of the end times. And yet, how many of us can truly say that we understand AI? Can either the optimists or the pessimists actually justify their positions? What does the AI future actually look like?
These aren’t easy questions to answer. In truth, there probably isn’t a single answer to describe our AI future. Rather, there is some range of possible futures, and it’s incumbent on us to make choices that lead to one of them or another. And given that we can’t agree on whether the AI future is something to pursue or something to defend against, working cooperatively is likely to be difficult.
Perhaps a first step then is to take a dispassionate look at what an AI future looks like, and what it’s going to take to design one that works for, rather than against, humanity.
The AI Future is Coming
The story of humanity is the story of progress. Where once we led short, miserable lives defined by subsistence farming and a precarious balance on the precipice of disaster, we now lead long lives of relative leisure, safety, and plenty…
