This post is the second in a series on AI Safety. In this post, I argue for the importance of AI Safety, presenting the arguments I find most compelling. The next post in this series will argue the opposing view, presenting arguments against the importance of AI Safety. In a fourth post, I will contrast the two viewpoints, highlight the side I find most compelling, and indicate why.
Artificial Intelligence may be the most important technology of our time. It simultaneously has the potential to be extraordinarily good or exceptionally bad. First, imagine a world without scarcity, disease or possibly even aging. It sounds too good to be true but that's the world that the most optimistic futurists think AI will enable. Next, imagine a world of unprecedented inequality, unbreakable authoritarian regimes, or even an extinct human race. That's the pessimists' view of how bad AI might be..
This month, OpenAI and IBM each demonstrated a very impressive machine learning project. These projects are perfect exhibits for demonstrating the potential power of AI tools. As with most tools, they can be used positively or negatively. A hammer can be used to drive a nail or injure a person. Unlike a hammer, however, these tools can be scaled virtually without limit, a feature which gives them the potential to have massively positive or negative effects. In this post, I use these new AI tools as examples to explore why scale makes AI tools different than most.