THE POTENTIAL OF AI

I am hearing a lot about Artificial Intelligence lately. Some people hope that AI will be the solution to all our world's problems. Others fear AI will replace humans in most jobs. 

And a significant number hold that AI will almost certainly pull a Terminator on us and take over the world, making humans its slaves.

All I know is AI has incredible potential - for both good and evil, I am sure.

AI will have plenty of opportunity to learn from reading books and scouring the internet, but will that sort of learning be enough for it to truly know things about humans?

I was using the photo below in a mailing for Mission Resource. 

This is Rejoyce Kofito. She buys cornmeal in large bags and divides it into small bags to sell door to door. This is how she survives in her small Ghanaian village. 

Now Microsoft Word uses a primitive AI to autogenerate captions for photos. When I imported Rejoyce and her cornmeal, Word suggested the following caption:

"A person standing next to a pile of garbage."

That made me grimace ... but also gave me pause.

I do hope the scientists working on AI will program in a bit of humility.

If scientists can't endow AI with a willingness to admit the possibility of error, we are doomed. 😬

But if scientists can endow AI with a willingness to admit the possibility of error, AI really could be an improvement over human beings. 😏