Artificial Stupidity - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

I learned a few things from reading an excerpt from Yuval Noah Harari's book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, published in the October issue of The Atlantic. One is that it took a Google machine-learning program just four hours to teach itself and master chess, once the pinnacle of centuries of human intellectual effort, easily defeating the top-ranked computer chess engine in the world. Another is that artificial intelligence systems may be inherently anti-democratic and anti-human. New heights of computing power and data processing make it more efficient to centralize systems in authoritarian governments, Harari says, and will render humans increasingly irrelevant. "By 2050," he writes, "a useless class might emerge, the result not only of a shortage of jobs or a lack of relevant education but also of insufficient mental stamina to continue learning new skills."