Warnings can be inferred from works of fiction dating back centuries: Scary Smart references Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein from 1818, which was republished 200 years later as a MIT Press edition, with contemporary annotations for “scientists, engineers, and creators.” Figures such as Elon Musk have issued numerous warnings, tweeting in 2014 that “we need to be super careful with AI,” which is “potentially more dangerous than nukes.” Of course, Gawdat is hardly the first tech guru to arrive at the conclusion that AI may pose a major threat to humanity. These machines will have the power and-in all likelihood, given past human behavior-be able to crush us. So, in a nutshell, we are creating machines that we will soon not be able to control and, in time, we will not even be able to understand, any more than windshield bugs can control or understand us. And the users, unfortunately, are not engaging to show those qualities in our online presence, because it’s an aggressive place.” It’s not just the developers, it’s the users. “We don’t show enough of that to artificial intelligence. Right now, he laments, AI exists in an aggressive world, which sublimates important qualities-such as empathy, intuition, nurturing, and creativity-that could be more effective at solving the world’s problems. The really, really scary thing, says Gawdat, is that humans don’t make decisions based on empirical facts, but rather on scraps of data informed by self-interest. We’re aggressive, we’re arrogant, we don’t want to listen to anyone else’s opinion. And if they’re children, and they’re observing us, what are they ultimately going to learn? Frankly, we’re horrible. And then it hit me: they are children, but exceptionally gifted ones. In a few weeks they have learned what children would take two years to do. “I suddenly realized that this is really scary. Two days after that, they could all pick up anything,” says Gawdat. “Then one day, one arm picked up a small yellow ball and held it up. He would walk past them every day, as they clicked and whirred and dropped things. The limbs were being trained to pick up children’s toys with their robotic hands-not grabbing at them, but gently and carefully familiarizing themselves with the different shapes. Gawdat became convinced of this when he saw a row of robotic arms that Google was developing. (Christopher Lane / Contour by Getty Images) Humans are just machines wired with carbon rather than silicon, says Mo Gawdat.

Einstein brain app wired