In today’s Addison Independent, on Page 13A, Middlebury College professor Hector Vila writes an insightful column on how to consider today’s challenges with artificial intelligence. He titles the column, “A.I. will not end humanity. Humans will.” He makes his point with astute clarity: the hard work diligent people are doing developing A.I. under deadlines and with mounting pressure is what can lead to dangerous mistakes.
His wisdom transcends the issue in ways I haven’t read elsewhere. Mistakes happen, he writes, not by a machine turning on humans, but “a thousand ordinary choices made by competent people going fast (we’re in a race), each one defensible on its own (what about China?), none of them made by anyone who thought they were deciding anything. Self-destruction accumulates. It doesn’t just arrive.”
And this pity thought, taken in part from among the 50 students he is teaching in two classes on A.I.: “A failure to imagine will end humanity. Not machines.”
Vila doesn’t portray the future of A.I. less ominously, nor is his point to cast blame in any direction, rather to have us understand where the danger lies. Don’t miss it.
Angelo Lynn
