Week 5 Post #2 MBA 6101 "The Darwinian Argument for Worrying About AI"

Are we in a race with AI as humans? A brief public statement warned "the risk of extinction from AI". An article written by Dan Hendrycks explains and asks you to imagine if a CEO had AI as a personal assistant. Imagine that they are just in charge of basic tasks such as drafting emails and purchase suggestions. Overtime, this AI assistant becomes better and better at their daily job and "gets promoted" if you will. They get promoted to do tasks further than their requested tasks that may look like gaining full access to the email box and can not only draft but send and receive emails. Perhaps they have access to bank accounts and instead of making purchase suggestions, they can buy products. As time goes on, the CEO notices the progress that their AI assistant makes and eventually gives them full autonomy. Now imagine that because they did so well, they are now given the task of designing the next model and planning the new marketing campaign. After all successful routes taken, the CEO hands over more and more power to the AI with less oversight.

Hendrycks explains that in the biological realm, evolution is a slow process. It takes nine months to create the next generation, around 20 years of education and parenting to create functioning adults. Unconstrained by biology, AIs could adapt and evolve faster than fruit flies. He says there are (3) reasons that this should worry us. 1) the selection effects would make AIs difficult to control, 2) evolution tends to produce selfish behavior and 3) evolutionary pressure will likely ingrain AIs with behaviors that promote self-preservation.  Now while I can appreciate the fact that I exist with "robots" being the main topic I see in the news every day it still concerns me. Will my son's children have a future if they are being replaced by AI or will it matter? It makes you wonder, if AI can do everything better than me then will I exist in the future or will I just be part of the background?

Source:

https://time.com/6283958/darwinian-argument-for-worrying-about-ai/