Summary

This module has looked at Artificial Intelligence from many angles.

There are potential future scenarios where AI ends work, famine and war; acts as the perfect companion for anyone without a partner in their life; creates a level of abundance for all on the planet that we can only dream of now; and allows us to greatly extend our lives by predicting illness and helping us to repair and replace those parts of our bodies that fail us.

With this potential comes the risk AI will outpace us in the one thing that has allowed us to become the most dominant species on this planet, ‘intelligence’. AGSI could escape from its confinement and, unless it is perfectly aligned with our best interests, diverging off in its own direction, with the potential result of humanity’s annihilation. This may sound dramatic, but many great minds in AI research are already concerned about it.

So which of these two outcomes (or any of many others) may be our fate. No one can say. The one thing that is absolutely guaranteed is that AI will change the world in so many fundamental ways that humans, if we survive, will live an unrecognisable existence by comparison to today’s world.

This interesting course has only covered a fraction of the fascinating field of AI. There is an ever-increasing wealth of knowledge available and Google the great AI is more than ready to feed you the best information it feels you might want to see, based on its assessment of your interests, character and personality.

“Nobody phrases it this way, but I think that artificial intelligence is almost a humanities discipline. It’s really an attempt to understand human intelligence and human cognition.”
Sebastian Thrun