Artificial Intelligence: Robots Could Threaten the Future of Humanity, Experts Warn

While the advent of artificial intelligence can ease day-to-day life for most of the population, a few experts have expressed their concerns over the future of humanity in the midst of the ever advancing robots. The threat of a robot uprising has been the subject of popular culture for many years. Considering the available technology at present, what used to be fodder for movies is likely to be a reality.

Nevertheless, there are scientists who remain doubtful over the negative impact of AI to the population.

Last September 2016, Oren Etzioni, CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, published an essay on the MIT Technology Review arguing against the notion that AIs are a threat to humanity. Etzioni conducted has since conducted independent research on the subject. According to his findings, more than 60 percent of the 80 respondents believe that superintelligent AIs would not be developed in the foreseeable future, which in this case means beyond twenty five years from now.

"Predictions that superintelligence is on the foreseeable horizon are not supported by the available data" explained Etzioni.

Allan Dafoe and Stuart Russell, from Yale University and University of California in Berkeley, has since published a response to Etzioni's article in the MIT Technology Review. According to Dafoe and Russell, the data gathered by Etzioni is faulty. They explain that the threat of AIs to humanity should not be ignored just because the possibility is more than twenty five years away.

"Many prominent AI experts have recognized the possibility that AI presents an existential risk. Contrary to misrepresentations in the media, this risk need not arise from spontaneous malevolent consciousness. Rather, the risk arises from the unpredictability and potential irreversibility of deploying an optimization process more intelligent than the humans who specified its objectives" quipped Dafoe and Russell.