My Thoughts Concerning AI

Humanity has imagined in great detail the implications of thinking machines
or artificial beings. They appear in Greek myths, such as Talos of Crete,
the golden robots of Hephaestus and Pygmalion's Galatea. The earliest known
humanoid robots (or automatons) were sacred statues worshipped in Egypt and
Greece, believed to have been endowed with genuine consciousness by
craftsman. In medieval times, alchemists such as Paracelsus claimed to have
created artificial beings. Realistic clockwork imitations of human beings
have been built by people such as Yan Shi, Hero of Alexandria, Al-Jazari
and Wolfgang von Kempelen. Pamela McCorduck observes that "artificial
intelligence in one form or another is an idea that has pervaded Western
intellectual history, a dream in urgent need of being realized."

Futurists estimate the capabilities of machines using Moore's Law, which
measures the relentless exponential improvement in digital technology with
uncanny accuracy. Ray Kurzweil has calculated that desktop computers will
have the same processing power as human brains by the year 2029, and that
by 2045 artificial intelligence will reach a point where it is able to
improve itself at a rate that far exceeds anything conceivable in the past,
a scenario that science fiction writer Vernor Vinge named the
"technological singularity".

Science fiction writers and futurists have also speculated on the
technology's potential impact on humanity. In fiction, AI has appeared as a
servant (R2D2), a comrade (Lt. Commander Data), an extension to human
abilities (Ghost in the Shell), a conqueror (The Matrix), a dictator (With
Folded Hands) and an exterminator (Terminator, Battlestar Galactica). Some
realistic potential consequences of AI are decreased human labor demand,
the enhancement of human ability or experience, and a need for redefinition
of human identity and basic values.

"Artificial intelligence is the next stage in evolution," Edward Fredkin
said in the 1980s, expressing an idea first proposed by Samuel Butler's
Darwin Among the Machines (1863), and expanded upon by George Dyson in his
book of the same name.

And that is what scares me. "The next stage in evolution". We have seen in
nature that evolution is nigh unstoppable. Is anyone else scared of such a
future?