MOREFIELD: Will Artificial Intelligence Destroy Humanity, Or Take Us To The Stars?

Ever since I was a child, I’ve been a huge science fiction fan. Movies like Star Wars, Star Trek, The Terminator, The Matrix, Alien, and countless more were staples of my childhood and beyond. They, along with books from authors like Frank Herbert, Michael Crichton, Orson Scott Card, and many more, captured my imagination with stories that felt like they could actually be possible either in a far-off place or even here in a far distant past or future.

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From my years as an ’80s kid watching shows like The Jetsons, I remember hoping I’d get to witness some of the marvels humans had long imagined but hadn’t yet experienced. Flying cars to travel in, humanoid robots to do your every whim, spaceships to take us to other planets here and beyond this solar system.

So when Elon Musk says he wants to help humanity become “interstellar,” it resonates with me. I want to see us set up a colony on the moon, on Mars, and eventually on another Earth-like habitable planet somewhere. Regardless of the craziness going on here on Earth, those things are worthy endeavors. It won’t be in my lifetime, obviously, but the thought that we could be headed in that direction makes me smile. Maybe I’ll have descendants who’ll get to live the life I’ve only seen in the movies.

So you can imagine how torn someone with my mindset might be when presented with evidence that the very thing that could end up curing cancer and driving the technology that will someday take us to the stars could actually be responsible for the end of humanity itself. I am, of course, talking about the meteoric rise of artificial intelligence (AI) systems and the data centers that power them.

Consider these two use cases in my own life over just the past two weeks. During a visit to Austin, Texas, for a conference earlier this month, my wife and I decided to try one of those Tesla Cybercabs we’d seen driving around town all by themselves, an automated two-seater with no steering wheel, no pedals, no rearview mirrors, and no back window. To say it looks futuristic is putting it mildly. When that thing drove up all by itself to pick us up at our dinner spot at Terry Black’s Barbecue (the place is amazing, by the way — do try it next time you’re there if you like great BBQ) and opened its doors like a bird would lift its wings, it felt like we were on a movie set. We were leery at first, but as it navigated the ten-minute trip in heavy traffic to our hotel like a professional driver, without any awkward small talk or expectation of a tip, we felt increasingly comfortable. So comfortable, in fact, that we used the service several more times while we were in the city.

Then, just last week, I used the Plus version of ChatGPT, which costs $20 a month, to completely redesign a friend’s formerly clunky company website almost from the ground up. It was like having an extremely fast professional web developer in a live chat who made my requested changes in real time. To try to convey the level of complexity here with just one example: A key widget subscription had run out, and it was going to cost $400 a year to get it going again. I asked ChatGPT to redesign the back end of the parts of the site that relied on that widget while preserving the look on the front end, and it did the task with zero issues. No widget, no $400. When I’d get stuck on how something should look, I would ask for mockup suggestions and pick the one that looked the best. I would ask for this feature or that feature, and they added them with ease. All in all, the project would have taken a professional web designer many hours and cost several thousand dollars, and I got it done in less than a day and, dare I say, it looks and works far better than anything a human could have done.

These things, along with the other wild stuff that today’s tech is doing with the help of AI, are the closest thing to magic any of us have ever experienced. Just astounding, and something I never imagined even five years ago that I would actually get to utilize.

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There is, however, another side to this brave new world we’re entering, one that a sizable percentage of people on both sides of the political landscape seem to be coming together on. The fact of the matter is, from the web developer who would have been employed to do my friend’s website to the Uber driver who would have been driving the cars we rode in Austin, many, many people are about to lose their jobs in the coming months and years. Will that simply mean that, despite short-term upheavals, over the long haul we get to be exponentially more productive as we take humanity to the stars, or will it mean billions either on the dole or starving and rioting, losing all hope for a purpose in life? Or maybe both?

And sadly, that’s the least of our worries. I’m not concerned about AI developing some sort of actual human-like consciousness. That’s impossible. It also doesn’t matter, because if Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and especially Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) are reached, the decision and ability to preserve its systems and eliminate the pesky humans that get in the way of ‘progress’ could come down to nothing more than simple data-driven logic, and there is absolutely nothing we could do to prevent it.

Just like Frankenstein’s monster, we’re certainly playing with a fire that could quickly get out of control. But does that mean we’re inevitably headed for doom? There’s an ongoing, robust debate about it, with experts coming down on both sides. As for myself, I don’t think so, though I do believe strong safety measures should be taken. The fact of the matter is, notwithstanding our race with China, the potential achievements for human development and prosperity made possible by the invention of AI make it impossible not to continue. I firmly believe that, used correctly and with the right safeguards in place, AI could accelerate mankind into the kind of future the science fiction writers only dreamed about.

And if it goes the other direction, I’d pick the coming robot overlords over rule by leftists any day.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.

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