Artificial Intelligence: Humanity’s Greatest Existential Risk?
Branko Terzic
This past weekend I watched the Netflix sci-fi epic The Electric State. The story is about an alternate reality 1990’s in which humanity goes to war with robots animated with artificial intelligence (AI). It’s not the only sci-fi thriller about mankind fighting intelligent robots of course (The Matrix, Terminator, Battlestar Galactica, etc) but it’s the most recent. Later that same day I picked up a book related to that subject which I had purchased earlier but set aside for later reading. This quote quickly caught my eye:
“…the greatest risk to humanity’s potential in the next hundred years comes from unaligned artificial intelligence, which I put at one in ten.”
This quote is from Tony Ord’s book The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity (Hatchette, 2020). As a professional in the energy industry, I was a bit surprised that “climate change” was not the “greatest” existential threat. To put things in context Ord, a Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at Oxford University offers the following definition:
- “An existential catastrophe is the destruction of humanity’s long-term potential.
- An existential risk is a risk that threatens the destruction of humanity’s long-term potential.”
Ord provides a list of risks but also includes a note as to his “big five” risks which include of course climate change:
- Nuclear war
- Climate change
- Other environmental damage
- Engineered pandemics
- Unaligned artificial intelligence (AI)
All of these are discussed in The Precipice which, due to being published in 2020, did not give Toby Ord, the author, an opportunity to see that his section on Pandemics in his Chapter 6 Future Risks would predict the coming of the global COVID pandemic starting later that year.
The issue of “unaligned AI” responds to Ord’s question:
Are there plausible future technologies that would bring existential risk?
Are these technologies probable enough to warrant preparations in case they arrive?”
It is important to note that Ord is not anti-technology as he writes that “…over the centuries all the risks technology imposes on humans has been outweighed by the benefits it has brought.”
However, that might not be the case in the future with AI as, Ord poses the question: “What would happen if sometime this century researchers created an artificial general intelligence surpassing human ability in almost every domain? Which Ord answers with “In this act of creation, we would cede our status as the most intelligent entities on earth.”
Ord asks what if the AI systems were built to achieve goals other than those aligning with human values such as “…winning wars, or maximizing profits, perhaps with very little focus on ethical constraints. These systems would be much more dangerous.”
Such issues are not new. Ray Kurzweil discussed potential problems of “strong AI” in his 2005 book The Singularity Is Near (Viking). His conclusion was that “Inherently there will be no absolute protection against strong AI.” ( P. 420)
Clearly a world where humans are not the most intelligent entities is one which we can envision. The issue is that of human control and whether an AI entity could keep its activities invisible to human awareness or control. AI control could provide humanity’s greatest challenge. However, with the odds at 1 in 10 that AI will be the existential threat, I’ll bet on humanity.
The Honorable Branko Terzic is a former Commissioner on the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and State of Wisconsin Public Service Commission, in addition to energy industry experience was a US Army Reserve Foreign Area Officer ( FAO) for Eastern Europe (1979-1990). He hold a BS Engineering and honorary Doctor of Sciences in Engineering (h.c.) both from the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee.
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