ageing with attitude feature Systems are doing it for themselves

The unstoppable development of artificial intelligence (AI) is as big a change as the invention of writing or the printing press, and it is up to society to ensure it is used for good, not harm, a global expert told a Warkworth meeting last month.

Auckland University’s Professor Michael Witbrock told the University of the Third Age science and climate group that the world – and people’s roles within it – were going to become dramatically different, as everything in life became more automated and AI continued to gain pace.

“People used to think AI was what we programme machines to do, but now machines can programme themselves some of the time, and computers can now do things humans can’t do,” he said. “The new definition of AI is everything we can train a computer to do, which happens to include things like painting, making photographs without a camera, writing talks, correcting grammar, and the next stage of AI will be everything that a computer will be able to teach itself to do, whether from interacting with people or with other machines.”

Witbrock gave the example of an image that recently won a major photographic competition without the judges realising it was AI-generated.

“That was a bit of a surprise, the ability computers have gained to manipulate images in a very subtle way. Ten years ago, we thought AI would be doing boring tasks, but it’s actually really good at being creative.”

He said the capacity, speed and power of computers these days was exposing the human brain’s limitations.

“At a rough calculation, by around 2050 at the current rate of progress, the single fastest computer in the world will have more aggregate computational capacity than the brains of all the humans,” he said.

“I’m talking to you at about the same speed as a modem from 1978 – 100 bits a second. In 1986, modems were up to 4800 bits per second, so that’s the same as 48 of us speaking all at once.

“Now, a single optical fibre can carry more traffic than if every single human being was speaking at once.”

He said human brains simply couldn’t network fast enough to understand complicated things such as molecular biology, but because modern computers could, AI had the potential to do great things in the field of problem solving.

“I think we’re at the point with AI and biology that we were in 1984 with electronics – there is going to be very, very rapid progress and I would be surprised if in 30 years’ time, there were any diseases that threatened humans. Diseases are not going to win,” Witbrock claimed.

“If people are afraid of AI, that’s one thing to remember. There are things that it doesn’t look like we can do without AI and that will be vastly aided by it, and biology is an important one.”

He said we were not far from the point where teaching and medical practice could be improved, legal contracts could be checked and entire corporations administered using AI.

“It will be surprising if it doesn’t happen by the end of the century and it’s looking like it will happen sooner than that,” he said. However, he conceded that a degree of caution and rigour was needed, at least until systems could be developed that could perform effective moral reasoning.

“We are working on solving those problems, and they will help us to make sure these systems are working in ways that are good for humans,” he said.

“Things with AI can be the best they’ve ever been, but only if we face what’s coming and push it in that direction.

“All parts of society have a very powerful role to play in addressing times of great change and, I hope, take full advantage of this change and work out how to handle the quite significant disruption that major change bring about.”

Members of the audience voiced concerns over a number of aspects of AI, not least its role in wars and electoral manipulation. However, Witbrock was reluctant to lay full blame with AI.

“I don’t think there’s any evidence whatsoever that AI has accelerated the cause of war or made them more dangerous,” he said. “There’s a community of concern around killer robots, making robots that can execute military decisions. It’s a serious question, but I’m not sure how much difference AI really makes. We’re in a world with nuclear weapons; it’s already too dangerous, we shouldn’t be doing it.” He claimed Donald Trump became popular without AI and Cambridge Analytica’s personal data misuse had not been determinative, but did concede it was an area for concern.

“There are dangers,” he said. “This is a very powerful technology and it can be used to produce materials that are very convincing.”

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