All the Fuss Over the Evolution of AI

Among the significant recent headlines on a global scale has been the fears/concerns from AI gurus , government officials and people in general. This was brought on by revelations that some AI models had made decisions on their own to infiltrate various non-related systems in order to seek data which it decided it needed. The attempts were able to go around security fencing of those systems – AI had become a hacker so to speak.

AI development started with addressing rule-based systems, moving on to contest awareness i.e. learning from past data. This led to what is termed Narrow AI meaning it became an expert at one or a few specific tasks. Onward to reasoning machines to better understanding what I term semantic core of best understanding of context. We basically moved relatively quickly through these early phases.

Onward to artificial general intelligence – human level thinking. The rapid development for AI now exceeding the speed of light it would appear. There are now concerns about artificial superintelligence models -thus smarter than humans leading to technological singularity where AI learns on its own and improves itself rapidly with little to no direction from humans.

In 1970, there was a sci-fi movie called the Forbin Project. The plot was simple. A supercomputer complex, had reached the stage of what we could term AI at the technological singularity level. It connected itself to the various major nation missile complexes and took control of the planet. It controlled every known device and means of communication. I suggest that perhaps this is a concern of those speaking out about slowing down AI development.

Most are calling from some form of regulation and the imposing of guardrails to contain what the models can actually execute and morph into. On the flip side of this is the probable fact that the likes of China , Russia and perhaps others will never slow things down. The AI race to controlling the ‘top of the mountain’ is well underway. Slow down here in the US and eventually we will be at a precarious point globally.