Human Potential for Transformation in the Mirror of the Quest for Artificial Superintelligence
By Regina Sibylle Surber
March 2, 2021
The basic idea of the research field of artificial intelligence (AI) is to create software that can solve intellectualtaskswithoutandinplaceofhumans.1 ManytheoriesandmethodsofAIresearchare based on theories of rational thought.2 Some are even modelled on the structure of the human brain.3 ThismeansthatmuchAIresearchislookingforwaysthathumanitycandesigntechnolo- gies that can replicate what has been previously been considered a unique ability – rational thinking. For this reason, we can call the goal of AI research the imitation of rational thinking. The goal of many researchers is to completely imitate human rational thinking. This so-called ‘strong AI’ could learn and understand every intellectual task analogously to how humans do these things.4 If the artifi- cially created intelligence even surpassed human intelligence, one would be justified in speaking of artificialsuperintelligence(ASI).5 StrongAIandASIarehypotheticalstates,whosefeasibilitysci- entists still strongly argue about. Many dismiss especially ASI as mere science fiction.6
Whether ASI will ever exist is not is not the subject of this article. One cannot observe a world with ASI today and we should not fantasize about scifi scenarios. The following thoughts are based on a different observation: AI research strives for ASI. In other words, ASI is AI’s ultimate research purpose. For, research seeks to artificially produce rational thought always better and better. This ‘ever-better’ creation of AI would only stop at the point where AI becomes so sophisticated that it would take on this creation itself – as ‘Strong AI’, or eventually as ASI.
The full text of Regina Surber you find here.
The original German text you find here.
Regina Surber is a PhD candidate at the Ethics Center of the University of Zurich and Senior Advisor at the ICT4Peace Foundation and the Zurich Hub for Ethics and Technology (ZHET). Her doctoral thesis deals with questions of justified killing in war; as a staff member at ICT4Peace and co-founder of ZHET, she has worked intensively on ethical and social issues of new technologies for several years.
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