Author | Tommy
First image source: G2
Will Artificial Intelligence Exterminate Humanity?
This is also a commonplace question. Just look at the movies made by Hollywood, classics such as "Terminator", "The Matrix", "I, Robot", etc. Human beings face a powerful "AI villain", and they are almost helpless every time they are beaten. The popularity of these movies also proves from the side that "artificial intelligence will eventually destroy the world". This view is very popular among the people. Regardless of whether the view is right or wrong, it is relatively easy to explain the popularity of this view:
Because of fear.
The deepest fear of human beings comes from the fear of the unknown.
The thought that the movie "The Fog" wants to express: the greatest fear of human beings is the unknown.
Not long ago, 350 AI practitioners, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google DeepMind CEO Jamis Hassabis, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, signed an open letter to warn the world of the huge potential threat of AI to human civilization.
01
lonely human
However, fear often exaggerates the risk. Is AI really dangerous, or is it the danger we imagine? Instead of entangled in this short-term question that can neither be verified nor falsified, why not talk about why people are afraid of it, but spare no effort to develop it?
Recently, two pieces of news surprised me: "Girl falls in love with ChatGPT boyfriend" and "Artificial intelligence starts working as a psychological counselor". At the beginning of its appearance, artificial intelligence defeated humans in terms of knowledge reserve and logical thinking. Emotional processing ability is considered to be the last bastion of human beings against machines, but they did not expect the fortress to fall so quickly and completely!
At present, the emotion recognition ability of AI has reached or even partially surpassed the human level.
Take Replika, an artificial intelligence chat application, as an example. After interacting with chatbots, many users say that they can’t tell whether the person on the other side of the network is a human or an AI. There are even many people who fell in love during the chat with AI and found the long-lost love feeling.
Replika is a virtual chatbot companion that you can fall in love with as if it were your boyfriend or girlfriend. It provides users with emotional support, mental health counseling, chat interaction and other services through artificial intelligence technology. The more you chat, the more Replika can develop its personality and memory with you, and the more it learns.
Artificial intelligence, being developed to be able to recognize emotions that are close to fake ones, is a thing that is destined to happen. To explain the reason, we must first trace back to the birth of the spirit of humanism in ancient Greece in the 5th century BC. As the Renaissance ended the long dark Middle Ages, the "people-oriented" humanism trend of thought, along with the prosperity of modern Europe, was spread to all parts of the world. Now this kind of thinking has become the mainstream of international values, and society encourages every ordinary person to explore the feeling of "self" from an early age. The expression of emotions is respected, it is no longer the exclusive power of nobles, everyone can be the center of the world!
The spirit of humanism: Advocate that everything is people-oriented, oppose the authority of God, and liberate people from the shackles of medieval theology. Advocate the liberation of individuality, pursue happiness in real life; pursue freedom and equality, oppose hierarchical concepts; advocate rationality, and oppose ignorance.
But reality cannot make everyone the center of the world, so that every expression of yours can be responded to, and every emotion can be understood by others. This unsatisfied demand cannot be solved at the level of social systems, so smart humans come up with the idea of technology, and artificial intelligence is the technology carrier that has the most high hopes.
As long as the mainstream values of human society are still dominated by humanism, the huge emotional needs of human "self-seeking" will promote AI's ability in emotional cognition to become stronger and stronger.
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The development of AI is like the rise of women
In the current development of AI, there is another important detail that deserves our attention. As mentioned earlier, the author is not surprised by the direction of artificial intelligence development, but I am surprised that it can develop to such an extent in a short period of time! One of the reasons for this is rooted in the rise of female power in society.
Looking back at modern history, the improvement of women's status has formed a complementary relationship with the needs caused by the progress of social productivity. For example, from polygamy (or multiple concubines) to the birth of monogamy, it originated from the fact that factory owners needed a lot of labor after the Industrial Revolution. Compared with the old system, monogamy can release population growth at the social level. In the future, male labor can no longer meet the needs of factory owners, and capitalists need female labor. In order to obtain this huge amount of labor, women must be liberated from family affairs and participate in social management, and the status of women has been further improved.
The improvement of women's status is jointly promoted by the "development of social productivity" and the "movement for women's equal rights". If there are only macro reasons for social development without the resistance of women's movements in the past, women's status will eventually be improved, but the time may be hundreds of years later. The former determines the end point, and the latter determines the time to reach the end point.
The reason why the topic of women's rise is brought up is because the development path of AI is very similar to it.
Just as every historical node in which women's rights and interests have been improved meets the new needs brought about by the progress of social productivity, the development of artificial intelligence also follows social needs. The rise of women's consumption has led to more and more products being designed around women. Capital has poured a lot of social resources into these products, and artificial intelligence has grown rapidly based on this demand without hesitation.
From a genetic point of view, women are more delicate and sensitive emotionally. The response in the field of AI is the rapid growth of emotion recognition ability models, such as chat robots are the most typical manifestation. Whether or not one has emotional capacity is regarded by many as the core criterion for identifying "living-non-living entities". Is artificial intelligence a machine or a life? This will be the most important threshold for AI to pass in the future.
Basic theory in macroeconomics: demand determines supply
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Unstoppable AI
Of course, we can’t talk so far away now, let’s talk about the current development of AI. The progress of artificial intelligence technology is affected by the improvement of women's social status, and the rise of women's power is the result of the progress of social productivity. Similarly, AI is also the inevitable product of the development of social productivity.
After years of Hollywood movies, the rise of AI in people's impression is full of labels such as fear, fear, violence, and war.
Because artificial intelligence technology does not change human beings, but the development of technology allows us to vent our hidden needs.
Just like the artificial intelligence chat application Replika, it can create a unique "listener" for each user through the "tuning" of each user. This is a privilege unimaginable in previous human history. Human beings live in groups, and everyone has a strong need to talk out, but even the emperor who is the Ninety-Five Supreme still calls himself a "lonely man". You can also imagine how rare and joyful it was for the ancients to have one or two confidants in life.
This need of human beings, which has been helplessly hidden for a long time, has been developed and vented in the development of AI technology. For this reason, even though the prospect of artificial intelligence is shrouded in many unknown fogs, the infinite temptation it brings to human beings is difficult to stop the whole society from thirsting for it.
Why can't a robot be your family member or friend?
Emotional cognition and independent thinking are two thresholds that artificial intelligence needs to break through.
Today, the breakthrough of AI in emotional cognition has far exceeded many people's expectations. At this rate, human beings may soon usher in a real "artificial life". Instead of trying to prevent and limit the development of AI, human society should prepare in advance when this "life body" arrives. Should we define it as a "property life" like chickens, cows, and geese, or as a "accompanying life" like cats and dogs, or even a step closer, giving it legal and political powers close to "inferior humans"?
Will silicon-based life be born on earth after possessing emotional cognition and self-recognition capabilities?
Perhaps one day, humans and artificial intelligence will be truly equal, even as depicted in some cyberpunk works: humans and artificial intelligence have formed a fusion, humans use mechanical bodies, and artificial intelligence has emotions and thinking abilities that completely match humans. Many people are afraid of such a picture, but this fear is likely to disappear with the advancement of technology bit by bit, just like the mythical ship of Theseus. As for the future of civilization, human beings, as carbon-based organisms, have too many limitations as the carrier of civilization. On the other hand, AI does not have these problems. They are more suitable successors than us. The wheels of history will be slowed down because of opposition, but they will not stop because of this.
The Ship of Theseus: In the 1st century AD, Plutarch asked a question: If the wood on Theseus' ship was gradually replaced until all the wood was not the original wood, would the ship still be the same ship?
Maybe human beings will have to change a concept sooner or later: the starting point of earth civilization is human beings, why can't the end point be artificial intelligence?
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