Will AI take over humanity?

As long as we use AI as our assistant and not supervisor, AI will not take over humanity. Machines are not sentient beings and lack the capacity for self-awareness and emotions. This means that machines do not have an inherent desire to take over the world or any other similar motive. Most of these behaviors require consciousness, and intelligence is not the same as consciousness. Intelligence is the capacity to learn, reason, and solve problems. The technology we have today is artificial "intelligence," not artificial "consciousness."

Although researchers in AI largely agree that we are nowhere close to achieving conscious AI, our perception of consciousness is more important than the question of whether or not these machines have it. Even though these programs are only intelligent (and not conscious), if we anthropomorphize them too much and interact with them intimately, many researchers agree that AI can be dangerous.

AI agents don't have self-awareness and emotions, and they give us all the attention we need any time we seek their attention. Because of these machine-like behaviors, we don't see them as humans. Inherently, they don't have such characteristics either. However, it is not difficult to program them to "pretend" to show emotions, to be self-aware, and to occasionally seek attention from us. Such applications may be useful for some research and medical applications, but for most of us, this can lead to a catastrophe. For this reason, some people believe that current AI is misusing personal pronouns and that an AI system should not call itself "I" or "we" when interacting with humans (Ban LLMs, 2023).

On the other hand, some argue that AI has already taken over. In a fascinating one-hour-long presentation, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, at the Center for Human Technology, show how deeply concerned they are about the public accessibility of tools like ChatGPT and how AI is deployed in the industry today (AI Dilemma, 2023). We consume too much online content not only because we crave new content but primarily because current social media companies use AI heavily. With powerful AI behind the scenes, they not only gain people's attention but also gain intimacy with the users and make them crave more content. From this perspective, it may make sense to argue that AI has already taken over.

Image credits: Subodh Dahal (not AI)