Why We Are Scared of Artificial Intelligence

Some of the world's biggest leaders in science and technology including Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and Bill Gates, have expressed their concerns about the rapid progression and evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Elon Musk in a CNBC interview stated, "I think that the biggest risk is not that the AI will develop a will of its own… but rather that it will follow the will of people that establish its utility function." Movies like The Terminator, The Matrix, Ex Machina, 2001: A Space Odyssey amongst others, all point to the notion that artificial intelligence will evolve past human intelligence to the point that we will no longer be able to control our own creations. There is an ingrained narrative that AI will somehow reach a level of self-awareness and inevitably then attempt to destroy or replace the human race. And while some of these ideas may seem excessive, or merely the product of media and film exaggeration of AI leading to Terminator-like robots hunting humans like deer, there is enough concern amongst thought leaders such as those mentioned above, to make these concerns highly credible even if there is no certainty about them ever playing out.