The first time I interviewed Eric Schmidt, a dozen years ago when he was the CEO of Google, I had a simple question about the technology that has grown capable of spying on and monetizing all our movements, opinions, relationships and tastes.
“Friend or foe?” I asked.
“We claim we’re friends,” Schmidt replied coolly.
Now that the former Google executive has a book out Tuesday on “The Age of AI,” written with Henry Kissinger and Daniel Huttenlocher, I wanted to ask him the same question about AI: “Friend or foe?”
“AI is imprecise, which means that it can be unreliable as a partner,” he said when we met at his Manhattan office. “It’s dynamic in the sense that it’s changing all the time. It’s emergent and does things that you don’t expect. And, most importantly, it’s capable of learning.
“It will be everywhere. What does an AI-enabled best friend look like, especially to a child? What does AI-enabled war look like? Does AI perceive aspects of reality that we don’t? Is it possible that AI will see things that humans cannot comprehend?”
I agree with Elon Musk that when we build AI without a kill switch, we are “summoning the demon” and that humans could end up, as Steve Wozniak said, as the family pets. (If we’re lucky.)
Talking about the alarms raised by the likes of Musk and Stephen Hawking, Schmidt said that “they think that by unleashing AI, eventually, you’ll end up with a robot overlord that’s 10 or 100 or 1,000 times smarter than the humans. My answer is different. I think all the evidence is that these AI systems are going to think, not like humans, but they’re going to be very smart. We’re going to have to coexist.”
You don’t think Siri and Alexa are going to kill us one night?
“No,” he said. “But they might become your child’s best friend.”
Continue reading: https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2021/11/01/maureen-dowd-what-will/
“Friend or foe?” I asked.
“We claim we’re friends,” Schmidt replied coolly.
Now that the former Google executive has a book out Tuesday on “The Age of AI,” written with Henry Kissinger and Daniel Huttenlocher, I wanted to ask him the same question about AI: “Friend or foe?”
“AI is imprecise, which means that it can be unreliable as a partner,” he said when we met at his Manhattan office. “It’s dynamic in the sense that it’s changing all the time. It’s emergent and does things that you don’t expect. And, most importantly, it’s capable of learning.
“It will be everywhere. What does an AI-enabled best friend look like, especially to a child? What does AI-enabled war look like? Does AI perceive aspects of reality that we don’t? Is it possible that AI will see things that humans cannot comprehend?”
I agree with Elon Musk that when we build AI without a kill switch, we are “summoning the demon” and that humans could end up, as Steve Wozniak said, as the family pets. (If we’re lucky.)
Talking about the alarms raised by the likes of Musk and Stephen Hawking, Schmidt said that “they think that by unleashing AI, eventually, you’ll end up with a robot overlord that’s 10 or 100 or 1,000 times smarter than the humans. My answer is different. I think all the evidence is that these AI systems are going to think, not like humans, but they’re going to be very smart. We’re going to have to coexist.”
You don’t think Siri and Alexa are going to kill us one night?
“No,” he said. “But they might become your child’s best friend.”
Continue reading: https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2021/11/01/maureen-dowd-what-will/
