Is Skynet Coming?

That’s the question this week: Is Skynet coming?

I read a piece recently that noted Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates have warned us about artificial intelligence. They have been quoted as this is potentially something that the human race needs to be cognizant of. However, I wonder.

I know what IBM’s Watson does is amazing, but is it intelligence? Is it anywhere close to sentience? Or is it really just pattern recognition and matching with facts? I think more of the latter, and I’m not sure we’re moving closer to a computer intelligence.

I guess there are narrowly defined domains where computers seem to be improving their capabilities, but it seems to me that these areas are defined by the programmers and the systems are tailored to a specific ability.

I do agree with the article that combinations of massive computing power and humans will make fundamental changes in the world. I think many, many jobs are potentially going to be lost and workers dislocated because of the ability of computers to do many jobs that humans perform today. I don’t have any solutions here, but I am glad I work in technology.

Steve Jones

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