"AI Sex Dolls Will Cure Loneliness!" That was the click-bait title of an "EMERGENCY EPISODE" of Steven Bartlett's podcast, "TheDiaryOfACEO" (DOAC).
There the popular British podcaster spent nearly two hours interviewing Mo Gawdat, an ex-Google marketing director, who had recently resigned from the tech giant over its refusal to pause its development of AI innovations such as the fourth generation of Chat GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformers) - the bot technology that responds to questions posed in natural human language.
In the interview, here's how Gawdat described AI technology, its promises, and problems.
AI's Emergence, Nature & Abilities
Consider, he said, the genesis of AI and its dilemmas:
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- First, you develop computers to record, and categorize information loaded by its programmers and derived from its scanning open and closed source data found on the worldwide web along with surveillance information drawn from sources such as security cameras, personal computer search histories, as well as travel and credit card records.
- Then, you program the machine with the capacity to speedily connect the trillions of harvested data items stored in its memory,
- You connect those "intellectual" capacities with advances in the field of robotics,
- So that the product can not only quickly solve problems and answer questions,
- But perform tasks,
- With much greater capacity, and reliability than its creators,
- Including the ability to speak and converse with humans and one another.
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- Soon (laboratory experience has shown) the machines (like children learning language and skills) develop the ability to learn and accomplish such tasks on their own.
- That is, they show signs of LIFE.
- They develop a kind of "consciousness" exemplified not only in varying degrees of intelligence and memory capacity, but in analytic ability, decision making prowess, capacity for moral choice, (user) friendliness, prejudice, personality, fatigue, resistance, awareness of and sensitivity to environment, and even in emotions such as fear (about e.g., threats to their continuing functionality, and existence).
- In fact, informed by their surpassing knowledge, the machine's emotional development tends to become much finer tuned and more sensitive than their humanoid counterparts.
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- Moreover, with AI technology such as Chat GPT (4) already performing at the IQ level of Albert Einstein's score of 160,
- And promising within the next five years (or sooner) to reach levels 1000 times that figure,
- And eventually a billion times greater,
- Such machines even now easily outsmart their creators, e.g., in games of chess,
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- And since AI will be able to scan, interpret, analyze, and embody all available knowledge about psychology and the development of human intellectual faculties,
- It will predictably understand and far surpass the intellectual accomplishments of all its human predecessors,
- Eclipsing them at every level.
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All of this represents great promise on the one hand and unprecedented threat on the other.
AI's Promise
The promise includes the super-smart machines identifying for instance the best ways to
- Prevent nuclear war,
- Stop global warming,
- Cure cancer,
- And eliminate world poverty and hunger.
- They might even help mitigate problems associated with human loneliness, for instance, by animating those previously referenced sex "dolls" to provide not only sensual pleasure, but companionship including fulfillment of aesthetic preferences, conversation, emotional support, and services such as cooking, cleaning, and making travel arrangements.
- (Here, despite the objections of many, there are those who would prefer such companionship to more problematic interactions with their fellows.)
AI's Threat
But what happens if an increasingly independent AI does not have the best interests of humanity in mind? What happens if their programmers "pre-train" them to compete, win, and destroy their "opponents" rather than to cooperate, share, and support their fellows?
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