Tag Archives: AI

AI Will Not Physically Destroy Civilization

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You have undoubtedly heard in the news that some predict AI will destroy civilization. Even the “Godfather” of AI, Geoffrey Hinton has quit Google and now feels compelled to warn of AI’s risks.

I recently spoke on this topic at Bio 2023 in Boston. I don’t want to minimize the stunning advances in AI as displayed recently in ChatGPT.  But, its threat to civilization is at worst nuanced.

However, those of us in the teaching world are concerned of the impact of ChatGPT in education. It can write quite good papers on any topic, although errors are common. However, its success in tackling exams is nothing short of stunning. ChatGPT can pass the bar exam for lawyers at the 90 percentile, ChatGPT4 can also pass a wide variety of standardized tests such as SATs, APs, GRE’s and even a test for Sommeliers! These skills of AIs like ChatGPT raises the concerns of academic cheating and the hindering the learning of our youth.

An article by the New York Post sums up these types of concerns: “Long known for his warnings on the potential dangers of AI.” Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Monday cautioned that even a “benign dependency” on these complex machines can threaten civilization.” (NY Post May 2, 2023)

Another concern RE AI is crime. Criminals are very clever and will use AI to scam people among other things. One way scamming is done is through deepfakes. A typical deepfake is a digital file of a person’s voice or video image that is fake. There is no end of ways that criminals can use deepfakes to extort money.

So, the latest AI technology is indeed unsettling. However, there is one area in which AIs are utter failures and likely will be for generations: The Physical Embodied Turing Test. This test would essentially challenge an AI robot to assemble something like IKEA furniture from a kit with written instructions. The state of AI development is so far behind in this regime that it makes this task science fictional. In 2019, my then 8 year-old grandson, Nate Su, assembled the Apollo Spacecraft’s 1969 parts, see Figure 1, in 4 hours. No AI can come close to doing this. For AIs to be a real physical threat to humanity, significant advances would be required in interacting in the physical world.

Figure 1. Eight year old Nate Su assembled the 1969 parts of the Apollo rocket in 4 hours. No AI can come close to this feat.

One of the reasons AIs performs so poorly in the physical world is that they have no body. So much of human’s interaction with the physical world is through our bodies and our senses of taste, touch, sight and sound. In addition, humans have years of context about the physical world that an AI Robot would have to learn. As an example, as I write this post I can look out into my living room and see the hard wood floor, covered by carpets, the furniture, our Mumford fireplace, the TV, the phone, and on and on. Each of these items have a long story connected with them. For an AI to navigate our physical world, it would need to “learn” about the myriad aspects of it.

So, don’t have any concern that an AI robot like M3gan (Figure 2.) is on the horizon. Even more humbling to the AI world is Steven Pinker’s adage that no AI can empty a dishwasher.

Figure 2. Robots like Megan will not be on the horizon for decades, if ever.

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

AI and Autonomous Vehicle Challenges: Common Sense, Flexibility, Dexterity, and Situational Awareness

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I have been following advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous vehicles (AV) for some time now. At first, I was a cautious; then I became a skeptic; and now I am a doubter.

AI can do some amazing things. More than 20 years ago, Deep Blue beat World grandmaster Garry Kasparov. Today, AIs can routinely beat chess grandmasters and other world experts at games like Go.

Although impressive, these accomplishments play to AI’s strengths. Any activity that can be reduced to algorithms are natural for AIs. These AI victories have created a belief by many that AIs will soon take over most jobs and eventually become our masters. Witness such motion picture franchises as The Matrix and The Terminator. Some serious intellects buy into this concern as shown in the book Our Final Invention. This book posits that AIs pose a threat to human existence. The book extrapolates the successes of AIs discussed above and predicts that AIs will eventually be many times more intelligent than humans and will somehow develop something like consciousness. Ultimately, the AIs will seek to eliminate us.

I find these concerns almost comical. AIs connected to robots can do some very impressive things. In electronic assembly, they can hand solder very effectively. Perhaps better than humans, and they don’t get tired. But, they are not flexible. If the hand soldering operation changes to a different design, the AI must be reprogrammed. Whereas a human can quickly change from design to design. Lack of flexibility is a major AI drawback.

AIs also lack common sense. As Stephen Pinker has pointed out, no AI can empty a dishwasher. This is a profoundly common sense operation for humans. Yet this task is not only beyond AIs of today, but likely will be for a long time. Even something as simple as unloading boxes from a truck is a challenge to AIs as pointed out recently in Bloomberg BusinessWeek.[i]

This lack of flexibility and common sense makes it very hard for AIs to compete against humans when multiple tasks are required.

It is also difficult for AI robots to display dexterity. They may be able to pick up a chestnut, but crush a strawberry. This task is simple for an 18-month-old human.

The promise of autonomous vehicles is also greatly exaggerated. For a few years, some self-driving cars have been able to drive 95% of the route from my house in Woodstock, VT, to Boston’s Logan airport. However, they have made little progress in negotiating country roads, detours, and routes with complex signage. In addition, AVs lack situational awareness. As an example, AVs can’t look at a group of people near a street corner and sense if they are planning to cross or not.

Detours are hard for AVs. (Source: https://nj1015.com/is-the-detour-sign-a-thing-of-the-past-in-nj/)

So, I don’t see AIs taking all of our jobs or AVs putting truck drivers out of work any time soon. But the good news is that more electronics will be needed as these technologies make their slow advancements. So I see a busy future in the electronics assembly world.

Cheers,

Dr. Ron