Relax: Artificially intelligent robot Godzilla won’t enslave us all – it’s humans, not technology, we should worry about says Oxford academic
After stark warnings about the risk of artificial intelligence to the future of humankind from such luminaries as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, one academic has countered such arguments
Breathe a sigh of relief: a robot Godzilla won't enslave us all, he reassures.
Luciano Floridi, professor of philosophy and ethics of information at Oxford, has said it's not sentient technology in the style of Terminator's Skynet that we should be worrying about. It's us.
"No AI version of Godzilla is about to enslave us, so we should stop worrying about science fiction and start focusing on the actual challenges AI poses. In the final analysis, humans, and not smart machines, are the problem, and will remain so for the foreseeable future," said Floridi, writing in the FT.
Yes, technology can be more intelligent than humans, but worries AI will lead to some dystopian future are scientifically unjust, he said.
"Existing 'smart' technologies are not a step towards full-blown AI, just as climbing to the top of a tree is not a step towards the moon, but the end of the journey."