Artificial
intelligence machines could put half of the Earth’s human workforce out of a
job within three decades, a computer scientist told colleagues at
the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in
Washington.
Echoing
physicist Stephen Hawking and tech giant Bill Gates’ warnings last year,
expert Moshe Vardi said artificial intelligence could be the end of
the human race as we know it, the Guardian reported Saturday. “We are approaching a time when
machines will be able to outperform humans at almost any task,” Vardi
said. “I believe that society needs to confront this question before it is
upon us: If machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what
will humans do?”
Warning
it won’t be the same as the Industrial Revolution when machines
overpowered the human physical capacity, Vardi said the artificial
intelligence will challenge the human mind, with human wit competing
against the prevision of mechanical intelligence. Vardi warned against the type
of future he is predicting, arguing a life predominantly taken up by leisure
while machines do all the work is not healthy.
“I do not
find this a promising future as I do not find the prospect of leisure-only
life appealing,” Vardi said. “I believe that work is essential to human
well-being.”
Tech
giants have said there is a future for mankind in expanding the role of
artificial intelligence in our daily lives. Ray Kurzweil, Google’s engineering
director, said at a conference in June that by the 2030s, human brains will be
able to connect to the cloud directly, and access the intelligence of thousands
of computers, CNN Money reported. Developers at Google have made
advancements in artificial intelligence, creating a self-driving car recognized
as a driver in the United States.
