6/7/2014 By 2045, Humans May No Longer Be the Top Species on Earth - Mic

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By Tom McKay 2 hours ago
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By 2045, Humans May No Longer Be
the Top Species on Earth
By 2045, Humans May No Longer Be the Top Species on Earth
Image Credit: Getty
The news: In just over 30 years, there's a
good chance the human race will be bowing
down to a new species of overlords: robots.
In a recent interview with Business
Insider, physicist Louis Del Monte said he
believes the singularity the point in the
future when machine intelligence will outmatch
even the smartest humans is approaching
quickly and will be here sooner than we think.
"By the end of this century," Del Monte
told Business Insider, "most of the human race
will have become cyborgs [part human, part
tech or machine]. The allure will be immortality.
Machines will make breakthroughs in medical
technology, most of the human race will have
more leisure time, and we'll think we've never
6/7/2014 By 2045, Humans May No Longer Be the Top Species on Earth - Mic
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had it better. The concern I'm raising is that the
machines will view us as an unpredictable and
dangerous species."
"[Humanity is] unstable, creates wars, has
weapons to wipe out the world twice over and
makes computer viruses," he says. None of
these are necessarily ideal traits in a potential
neighbor, and Del Monte warns that intelligent
machines could assert their independence or
even attempt to convince people to augment
themselves with superior synthetic parts.
So, is this for real? Barring major setbacks in
technology, humanity seems to be on the road
towards creating true artificial intelligences.
Depending on who you ask, the point at which
that seems likely to happen is either predictable
or complete conjecture. Google director of
engineering Ray Kurzweil, for example, thinks
the 2045 date is spot on and is inevitable due
to the progression of processing power, which
doubles every 18 months.
But skeptics like experimental psychologist and
cognitive scientist Steven Pinker think that all
this futurism is a little silly. In 2008, he
told IEEE Spectrum:
"There is not the slightest reason to
believe in a coming singularity. The
fact that you can visualize a future in
your imagination is not evidence that
it is likely or even possible. Look at
domed cities, jet-pack commuting,
underwater cities, mile-high buildings
and nuclear-powered automobiles
6/7/2014 By 2045, Humans May No Longer Be the Top Species on Earth - Mic
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all staples of futuristic fantasies when
I was a child that have never arrived.
Sheer processing power is not a pixie
dust that magically solves all your
problems."
In 2006, The Economist poked more holes in
Kurzweil's thesis by applying the processor
logic to the number of blades on a razor.
There are, of course, other criticisms of the
idea of singularity. For one, it's very possible
humans will outpace technological progression
and collapse in on itself from unemployment
before AI is developed to the requisite point.
Additionally, machines wouldn't become the
planet's dominant species overnight they'd
depend on billions of humans to develop,
maintain and support them. io9's George
Dvorsky makes a compelling argument that
"Being twice as smart as a human doesn't
6/7/2014 By 2045, Humans May No Longer Be the Top Species on Earth - Mic
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suddenly mean you can make yourself infinitely
smart."
Still ... Even if a shift in human consciousness
isn't imminent, autonomous machines will
create their own challenges even if they aren't
intelligent. The UN is already debating whether
to ban the use of military robots that could self-
select their own targets. Expert systems that
exceed human capabilities in one area but fail
to understand others could be potentially
catastrophic; a smart system organizing high-
frequency stock trading, for example, could
operate so fast it destabilizes the
market (thisactually happened in 2010).
People could also fail to understand the
systems they've created, especially if they
autonomously improve themselves. Watson, a
computer program created to beat the best
human Jeopardy! players, is not completely
understood by its own developers. While
technology might indeed solve many of our
problems, it will also almost certainly create
unprecedented challenges. The important thing
is to understand those challenges before we're
left with the most terrifying (and arguably
awesome) machines possible:
6/7/2014 By 2045, Humans May No Longer Be the Top Species on Earth - Mic
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Tom McKay
Tom is a Live News columnist for
PolicyMic, where he writes about
politics, media, and technology.
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