How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity 2019 by Amy Webb
The big nine corporations – Amazon, Google, Facebook, Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, Microsoft, IBM and Apple – are the new gods of AI.
Idea #1: AI has been revolutionized by the development of deep neural networks (DNNs).
Idea #2: AI is already beginning to achieve superhuman intelligence.
Idea #3: The range and power of AI will increase exponentially over the course of the next 50 years.
Idea #4: There’s a brief window in which the future of AI will be shaped, primarily by actors in the United States and China.
Idea #5: The US approach to tech research and development revolves around consumerism, profit-making and short-term thinking.
Idea #6: China has a government-led tech industry that prioritizes AI and is aimed toward control and global domination.
Idea #7: The current course of AI development could lead humanity to a tremendous disaster.
Idea #8: To safeguard the future of AI, the United States and its allies need to develop the right policies and international cooperation.
The key message:
Artificial intelligence has made remarkable progress in recent years and is set to make even more tremendous progress in the near future. Unfortunately, the nine major American and Chinese tech companies leading the field are being driven in troubling directions by market and governmental pressures. Unless that changes in the next couple of decades, the result could be a disaster for humanity. To avert that disaster, the United States and its allies must take decisive action as soon as possible.
