Whenever the topic of AI is brought up, the main question that ends up entering people’s minds is what type of an impact it will end up having on our lives in the long term. A survey conducted by AI Impacts polled 3,000 experts in the field of machine learning to get to the bottom of this very question, and it turns out that some of them believe that AI could lead to an extinction level event.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that between 38% and 51% of the people that responded to this survey said that there’s a 10% chance that AI will make us go extinct. The majority, or nearly 60% to be precise, said that there’s at least a 5% chance of something of this occurring in the near to distant future, which means that the possibility is there even if it’s not all that likely.
In spite of the fact that this is the case, AI will also give rise to a number of technological advances that used to be considered utterly impossible in the past. What's more is that the timeline in which AI will be able to accomplish the same tasks as human beings appears to be decreasing, with survey respondents saying that there’s a 50/50 chance of AI being able to do every task humans can do without assistance by 2047. Just two years ago, this estimate was placed at around 2060, and it will be interesting to see if it draws ever closer as AI becomes increasingly advanced.
At the end of the day, 70% of the experts that answered questions presented to them in this survey were of the opinion that the good will largely outweigh the bad, and that a positive impact was far more likely than something negative coming to pass. AI trends regarding misinformation and propaganda are still a prime concern, though, and the manner in which we end up responding to them will be of crucial importance moving forward.
Image: Digital Information World - AIgen
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With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that between 38% and 51% of the people that responded to this survey said that there’s a 10% chance that AI will make us go extinct. The majority, or nearly 60% to be precise, said that there’s at least a 5% chance of something of this occurring in the near to distant future, which means that the possibility is there even if it’s not all that likely.
In spite of the fact that this is the case, AI will also give rise to a number of technological advances that used to be considered utterly impossible in the past. What's more is that the timeline in which AI will be able to accomplish the same tasks as human beings appears to be decreasing, with survey respondents saying that there’s a 50/50 chance of AI being able to do every task humans can do without assistance by 2047. Just two years ago, this estimate was placed at around 2060, and it will be interesting to see if it draws ever closer as AI becomes increasingly advanced.
At the end of the day, 70% of the experts that answered questions presented to them in this survey were of the opinion that the good will largely outweigh the bad, and that a positive impact was far more likely than something negative coming to pass. AI trends regarding misinformation and propaganda are still a prime concern, though, and the manner in which we end up responding to them will be of crucial importance moving forward.
Read next: The Internet Might Already Be Overrun With AI Spam
