Q & A: The future of artificial
intelligence
What is artificial intelligence?
It's the study of methods for making computers behave intelligently. Roughly
speaking, a computer is intelligent to the extent that it does the right
thing rather than the wrong thing. The right thing is whatever action is most
likely to achieve the goal, or, in more technical terms, the action that
maximizes expected utility. AI includes tasks such as learning, reasoning,
planning, perception, language understanding, and robotics.
Common misconceptions
It's a specific technology. For example, in the 1980s and 1990s one
often saw articles confusing AI with rule-based expert systems; in the
2010s, one sees AI being confused with many-layered convolutional neural
networks. That's a bit like confusing physics with steam engines. The
field of AI studies the general problem of creating intelligence in
machines; it is not a specific technical product arising from research
on that problem.
It's a specific class of technical approaches. For example, it's common
to see authors identifying AI with symbolic or logical approaches and
contrasting AI with "other approaches" such as neural nets or genetic
programming. AI is not an approach, it's a problem. Any approach to the
problem counts as a contribution to AI.
It's a particular community of researchers. This relates to the
preceding misconception. Some authors use the term "computational
intelligence" to refer to a supposedly distinct community of researchers
using approaches such as neural networks, fuzzy logic, and genetic
algorithms. This is very unfortunate since it drives researchers to
consider only approaches that are accepted within their community rather
than approaches that make sense.
AI is "just algorithms". This is not strictly a misconception, because
algorithms (loosely defined as programs) are of course what AI systems
are made of, along with all other applications of computers. However,
the kinds of tasks addressed by AI systems tend to differ significantly
from traditional algorithmic tasks such as sorting lists of numbers or
calculating square roots.
How will AI benefit human society?
Everything that civilization offers is a product of our intelligence. AI
provides a way to expand that intelligence along various dimensions, in much
the same way that cranes allow us to carry hundreds of tons, aeroplanes allow
us to move at hundreds of miles per hour, and telescopes allow us to see
things trillions of miles away. AI systems can, if suitably designed, support
much greater realization of human values.
Common misconceptions
AI is necessarily dehumanizing. In many dystopian scenarios, AI is
misused by some to control others, whether by surveillance, robotic
policing, automated "justice", or an AI-supported command-and-control
economy. These are certainly possible futures, but not ones the vast
majority of people would support. On the other hand, AI offers greater
access for humans to human knowledge and individual learning; the
elimination of language barriers between peoples; and the elimination of
meaningless and repetitive drudgery that reduces people to the status
of, well, robots.
AI will necessarily increase inequality. It is certainly possible that
increased automation of work will concentrate income and wealth in the