64 year old Wozniak categorically stated that “Computers are going to take over from humans,” while giving an interview to the Australian Financial Review. “No question,” he added. Over the years as technology has developed many intellectuals and prominent personalities are warning about the grim doomsday scenario when AI take over Earth. We had earlier reported another prominent personality from the tech field, Tesla CEO Elon Musk state that AI poses the “biggest existential threat” to humanity. Musk has been a very vociferous advocate of the biggest existential threat theory and speaks about it very frequently. In his recent speech to the MIT students he noted that, Musk along with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Hollywood actor Ashton Kutcher have invested in Vicarious, a firm which is aiming at building a smart intelligent computer which will think like a human! Musk says he has invested in this company only to ensure that the end product created will be a “good super intelligent computer” and not some “disastrous monster”. A team of researchers from Oxford University had also seconded Musk’s prediction giving a list of reasons why it is possible. Eminent physicist Stephen Hawking has also said that AI could “spell the end of the human race.” Wozniak told the Australian Financial Review that “like people including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have predicted, I agree that the future is scary and very bad for people. If we build these devices to take care of everything for us, eventually they’ll think faster than us and they’ll get rid of the slow humans to run companies more efficiently.” He adds: “Will we be the gods? Will we be the family pets? Or will we be ants that get stepped on? I don’t know about that … But when I got that thinking in my head about if I’m going to be treated in the future as a pet to these smart machines … well I’m going to treat my own pet dog really nice.” Artificial Intelligence is a paradox for humanity in a way. We need more and more superior machines that can help us do things which cant be humanly possible yet we have to wary of the fact that these AIs can mutate into something like what was picturised in the popular sci-fi movie series, Terminator. Though AI is still pretty much in its infancy but more and more companies are investing in robotics to make superior AI. One of the examples is the Japanese experiment with ASIMO while another hotel in Japan hopes to have a employ robot receptionists, bellhops and concierges. Henn-na Hotel located in Japan will have 10 robot staff in addition to human staff and these android assistants will do everything from greeting guests to carrying their luggage to their hotel room.
