Will AI save humanity? US tech fest offers reality check
(MNP) – Artificial intelligence aficionados are betting that the technology will help solve humanity’s biggest problems, from wars to global warming, but in practice, these may be unrealistic ambitions for now.
“It’s not about asking AI ‘Hey, this is a sticky problem. What would you do?’ and AI is like, ‘well, you need to completely restructure this part of the economy’,” said Michael Littman, a Brown University professor of computer science.
Littman was at the South By Southwest (or SXSW) arts and technology festival in Austin, Texas, where he had just spoken on one of the many panels on the potential benefits of AI.
“It’s a pipe dream. It’s a little bit science fiction. Mostly what people are doing is they’re trying to bring AI to bear on specific problems that they’re already solving, but just want to be more efficient.” “It’s not just a matter of pushing this button and everything’s fixed,” he said.
With their promising titles (“How to Make AGI Beneficial and Avoid a Robot Apocalypse”), and the ever presence of tech giants, the panels attract big crowds, but they often hold more pragmatic objectives, like promoting a product.
At one meeting called “Inside the AI Revolution: How AI is Empowering the World to Achieve More,” Simi Olabisi, a Microsoft executive, praised the tech’s benefits on Azure, the company’s cloud service.
