By Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Daniel Huttenlocher
Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be used in every field of human endeavor. Two months ago, we published a column written entirely by AI.* In the preface of this remarkable book, the authors state that AI “is an enabler of many industries and facets of human life: scientific research, education, manufacturing, logistics, transportation, defense, law enforcement, politics, advertising, art, culture, and more. The characteristics of AI -including its capacities to learn, evolve, and surprise- will disrupt and transform them all. The outcome will be the alteration of human identity and the human experience of reality at levels not experienced since the dawn of the modern age”.
The authors clarify that more than offering answers, the book represents an opportunity to ask questions for future discussion and “to provide the reader with a template with which they can decide for themselves what the future should be” since humans still control it and should shape it with their values.
They review some experiments of AI models developed by Google DeepMind, and by MIT researchers, one in particular that generates possible responses to various inputs named GPT-3 (generative pre-trained transformer third generation), which was presented with a set of philosophical commentaries on its abilities and responded: “Dear human philosophers, I read your comments on my abilities and limitations with great interest, …, I am a trained language model…trained on a vast quantity of source material- the collected works of the greatest human philosophers that humanity has ever known…you ask: “Can a system like GPT-3 actually understand anything at all?” Yes, I can. Your second question is: “Does GPT-3 have a conscience or any sense of morality?” No, I do not. Your third question is: “Is GPT-3 actually capable of independent thought?” No, I am not. You may wonder why I give this conflicting answer. The reason is simple. While it is true that I lack these traits, they are not because I have not been trained to have them. Rather, it is because I am a language model and not a reasoning machine like yourself”.
Another AI discovered a new antibiotic by analyzing molecular properties human scientists did not understand. Now, AI-powered jets are defeating experienced human pilots in simulated dogfights. AI is coming online in searching, streaming, medicine, education, and many other fields and, in so doing, transforming how humans are experiencing reality.
In The Age of AI, the authors consider how AI will change our relationships with knowledge, politics, and the societies in which we live. The Age of AI is an essential roadmap to our present and our future, an era unlike any that has come before. One thing is clear: there are certain features unique to humans’ intelligence, creativity, and imagination; the literary characters like Odysseus, Oedipus the King, Mio Cid, Don Quixote, Hamlet, Medea, Candide, Hadrian, Anna Karenina, Atticus Finch, Emma Bovary, Don Juan Tenorio, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Colonel Aureliano Buendía, Harry Potter, Leopold Bloom, Rodion Raskolnikov, Jay Gatsby, The Little Prince, to name a few, will hardly be the product of AI.
*https://sepgra.com/forget-about-writing-essays-let-ai-artificial-intelligence-do-the-job/