The dangers of Ai are real and prevalent but the odds of it killing us are much much lower than you might think. Artificial intelligence works by mimicking a human brain using data, computational power, and algorithms. These three basic functions create a program that can “learn” and apply that knowledge in the future. This is truly the only function of the Artificial intelligence that we have publicly available today. Every time you ask Ai a question it is retrieving data that it already has, computing anything in the question that might require it, then using algorithms to form sentences. Then it saves that entire interaction including your responses and stores it all as data to be used again.
Will AI turn on us ?
Probably not, the answer is sort of complex. It is complex because the AI that we currently have access to has many fail-safes. In simple terms, there are many ways to “unplug” it, and these have been designed so that the AI cannot stop itself from being unplugged.
Another interesting thing is that AI is not quite what we expected it to be. There were many theories and movies that made plausible guesses but what we ended up with is truly unexpected. Engineers, scientists, and film directors alike, thought that creating Ai would be like creating a consciousness with the ability to make its own decisions while also helping us make technological progress. Instead, what we got was a program with extraordinary abilities and near limitless potential, but it does not desire anything. Ai does not desire to grow or to die or for humans to grow or die. Chat Ai only “thinks” or computes when asked a question. Even the Ai implemented in fighter jets and weaponry does not have any motivation.
But that is a more dangerous thing than having it “think” and “choose” on its own. This is because humans are making the algorithms. Not just any humans but the richest and most politically motivated people on the planet have the ability to influence Ai to do whatever they want it to do. Think about the companies and countries that own and run Ai programs. We won’t name them but there are multiple people on that list with more than questionable motives. So then, our conclusion is that current Ai is not dangerous and will not got Terminator on us. However, keep an eye on the people controlling the Ai. If someone wanted to make Ai believe that humans are the enemy and that their task was to eliminate us, in theory, that is possible. But due to Ai being privatized and not one central Ai for the whole world to use, there are checks and balances to prevent this. If one company creates a bad rogue ai, other companies can create hero Ai’s to protect our power grids and all that good stuff.