According to the experts, there’s a 50% chance of artificial intelligence (AI) overtaking human intelligence within the next 45 years. A recent survey carried out by a team of researchers at the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute asked 1,634 of the leading AI researchers when they thought this would most likely happen. A total of 352 experts responded and their results were revealed this month.
The general consensus from the survey was that AI will outperform humans in the following timescales:
- Translating languages by 2024
- Driving trucks by 2027
- Writing high school essays by 2026
- Writing a bestseller by 2049
- Carrying out surgery by 2053
However, if previous predictions are anything to go by, it may be much faster than this. For those experts who answered the survey n 2015, most predicted that AI wouldn’t beat a human Go player until 2027, yet that’s already been done. And, while there’s only a 50% chance of AI surpassing human intelligence within the next 45 years, those experts from Asia think it will happen much quicker at around 30 years from now.
Whichever one holds to be true, that doesn’t really give us as a society a whole lot of time to prepare before AI does take over. We need to address the potential issues that we face in terms of employment, the economy and out cultures. Canada has begun preparing by investing heavily in education and training in automation and many in the US are requesting investment to do the same. A universal basic income (UBI) program is being trialed in Canada and Germany, while various tech leaders including Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are supporting the idea in the US.
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