The end of the world is nigh
Today all the talk is about AI this, robots that, and the end of jobs for people.
To me it’s just another technological development in human evolution like all the ones before. Nothing more, nothing less.
History shows time and time again that every new invention was going to spell the demise of the world as we know it and people would be out of work, or worse, the machines will take over.
I remember being told at school that it was going to be harder for my generation to get a job than the previous one because of robots and automation. Interestingly my son tells me exactly the same thing: that his generation is going to have less jobs available due to automation than my generation.
Like I said, this fear is not new, science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke wrote about this way back in the sixties and along with Stanley Kubrick released the film ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ in 1968, which is about the sentient computer HAL that controls the systems of a spacecraft and interacts with it’s crew and then takes over.
What was science fiction is now reality, and real worries about the possibility of AI developing to the stage where it does indeed go beyond our control have been suggested by many scientific leading figures including Stephen Hawking.
Stephen Hawking said ‘way back’ in 2014: “Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks.”
I’m sure their concerns are valid, but hopefully those fears will be proven to be wrong with time.
It is not that I am a strong advocate for AI, nor am I a Luddite, I just realise it is happening and will continue to, and as humans we will evolve, adapt and accept it like we always have with any previous new technologies and thereby benefit from it.