Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humans
Experts say the rise of artificial intelligence will make most people better off
over the next decade, but many have concerns about how advances in AI will affect
what it means to be human, to be productive and to exercise free will
By
Janna Anderson
and
Lee Rainie
Table that shows that people in most of the surveyed countries are more willing to
discuss politics in person than via digital channels.
A vehicle and person recognition system for use by law enforcement is demonstrated
at last year’s GPU Technology Conference in Washington, D.C., which highlights new
uses for artificial intelligence and deep learning. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
Digital life is augmenting human capacities and disrupting eons-old human
activities. Code-driven systems have spread to more than half of the world’s
inhabitants in ambient information and connectivity, offering previously unimagined
opportunities and unprecedented threats. As emerging algorithm-driven artificial
intelligence (AI) continues to spread, will people be better off than they are
today?
Some 979 technology pioneers, innovators, developers, business and policy leaders,
researchers and activists answered this question in a canvassing of experts
conducted in the summer of 2018.
The experts predicted networked artificial intelligence will amplify human
effectiveness but also threaten human autonomy, agency and capabilities. They spoke
of the wide-ranging possibilities; that computers might match or even exceed human
intelligence and capabilities on tasks such as complex decision-making, reasoning
and learning, sophisticated analytics and pattern recognition, visual acuity,
speech recognition and language translation. They said “smart” systems in
communities, in vehicles, in buildings and utilities, on farms and in business
processes will save time, money and lives and offer opportunities for individuals
to enjoy a more-customized future.
Many focused their optimistic remarks on health care and the many possible
applications of AI in diagnosing and treating patients or helping senior citizens
live fuller and healthier lives. They were also enthusiastic about AI’s role in
contributing to broad public-health programs built around massive amounts of data
that may be captured in the coming years about everything from personal genomes to
nutrition. Additionally, a number of these experts predicted that AI would abet
long-anticipated changes in formal and informal education systems.
Yet, most experts, regardless of whether they are optimistic or not, expressed
concerns about the long-term impact of these new tools on the essential elements of
being human. All respondents in this non-scientific canvassing were asked to
elaborate on why they felt AI would leave people better off or not. Many shared
deep worries, and many also suggested pathways toward solutions. The main themes
they sounded about threats and remedies are outlined in the accompanying table.
[chart id=”21972″]
Specifically, participants were asked to consider the following:
“Please think forward to the year 2030. Analysts expect that people will become
even more dependent on networked artificial intelligence (AI) in complex digital
systems. Some say we will continue on the historic arc of augmenting our lives with
mostly positive results as we widely implement these networked tools. Some say our
increasing dependence on these AI and related systems is likely to lead to
widespread difficulties.
Our question: By 2030, do you think it is most likely that advancing AI and related
technology systems will enhance human capacities and empower them? That is, most of
the time, will most people be better off than they are today? Or is it most likely
that advancing AI and related technology systems will lessen human autonomy and
agency to such an extent that most people will not be better off than the way
things are today?”
Overall, and despite the downsides they fear, 63% of respondents in this canvassing
said they are hopeful that most individuals will be mostly better off in 2030, and
37% said people will not be better off.
A number of the thought leaders who participated in this canvassing said humans’
expanding reliance on technological systems will only go well if close attention is
paid to how these tools, platforms and networks are engineered, distributed and
updated. Some of the powerful, overarching answers included those from:
Sonia Katyal, co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology and a
member of the inaugural U.S. Commerce Department Digital Economy Board of Advisors,
predicted, “In 2030, the greatest set of questions will involve how perceptions of
AI and their application will influence the trajectory of civil rights in the
future. Questions about privacy, speech, the right of assembly and technological
construction of personhood will all re-emerge in this new AI context, throwing into
question our deepest-held beliefs about equality and opportunity for all. Who will
benefit and who will be disadvantaged in this new world depends on how broadly we
analyze these questions today, for the future.”
We need to work aggressively to make sure technology matches our values.Erik
Brynjolfsson
Erik Brynjolfsson
Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy and author
of “Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future,” said, “AI and related
technologies have already achieved superhuman performance in many areas, and there
is little doubt that their capabilities will improve, probably very significantly,
by 2030. … I think it is more likely than not that we will use this power to make
the world a better place. For instance, we can virtually eliminate global poverty,
massively reduce disease and provide better education to almost everyone on the
planet. That said, AI and ML [machine learning] can also be used to increasingly
concentrate wealth and power, leaving many people behind, and to create even more
horrifying weapons. Neither outcome is inevitable, so the right question is not
‘What will happen?’ but ‘What will we choose to do?’ We need to work aggressively
to make sure technology matches our values. This can and must be done at all
levels, from government, to business, to academia, and to individual choices.”
Bryan Johnson, founder and CEO of Kernel, a leading developer of advanced neural
interfaces, and OS Fund, a venture capital firm, said, “I strongly believe the
answer depends on whether we can shift our economic systems toward prioritizing
radical human improvement and staunching the trend toward human irrelevance in the
face of AI. I don’t mean just jobs; I mean true, existential irrelevance, which is
the end result of not prioritizing human well-being and cognition.”
Marina Gorbis, executive director of the Institute for the Future, said, “Without
significant changes in our political economy and data governance regimes [AI] is
likely to create greater economic inequalities, more surveillance and more
programmed and non-human-centric interactions. Every time we program our
environments, we end up programming ourselves and our interactions. Humans have to
become more standardized, removing serendipity and ambiguity from our interactions.
And this ambiguity and complexity is what is the essence of being human.”
Judith Donath, author of “The Social Machine, Designs for Living Online” and
faculty fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society,
commented, “By 2030, most social situations will be facilitated by bots –
intelligent-seeming programs that interact with us in human-like ways. At home,
parents will engage skilled bots to help kids with homework and catalyze dinner
conversations. At work, bots will run meetings. A bot confidant will be considered
essential for psychological well-being, and we’ll increasingly turn to such
companions for advice ranging from what to wear to whom to marry. We humans care
deeply about how others see us – and the others whose approval we seek will
increasingly be artificial. By then, the difference between humans and bots will
have blurred considerably. Via screen and projection, the voice, appearance and
behaviors of bots will be indistinguishable from those of humans, and even physical
robots, though obviously non-human, will be so convincingly sincere that our
impression of them as thinking, feeling beings, on par with or superior to
ourselves, will be unshaken. Adding to the ambiguity, our own communication will be
heavily augmented: Programs will compose many of our messages and our online/AR
appearance will [be] computationally crafted. (Raw, unaided human speech and
demeanor will seem embarrassingly clunky, slow and unsophisticated.) Aided by their
access to vast troves of data about each of us, bots will far surpass humans in
their ability to attract and persuade us. Able to mimic emotion expertly, they’ll
never be overcome by feelings: If they blurt something out in anger, it will be
because that behavior was calculated to be the most efficacious way of advancing
whatever goals they had ‘in mind.’ But what are those goals? Artificially
intelligent companions will cultivate the impression that social goals similar to
our own motivate them – to be held in good regard, whether as a beloved friend, an
admired boss, etc. But their real collaboration will be with the humans and
institutions that control them. Like their forebears today, these will be sellers
of goods who employ them to stimulate consumption and politicians who commission
them to sway opinions.”
Andrew McLaughlin, executive director of the Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale
University, previously deputy chief technology officer of the United States for
President Barack Obama and global public policy lead for Google, wrote, “2030 is
not far in the future. My sense is that innovations like the internet and networked
AI have massive short-term benefits, along with long-term negatives that can take
decades to be recognizable. AI will drive a vast range of efficiency optimizations
but also enable hidden discrimination and arbitrary penalization of individuals in
areas like insurance, job seeking and performance assessment.”
Michael M. Roberts, first president and CEO of the Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and Internet Hall of Fame member, wrote, “The
range of opportunities for intelligent agents to augment human intelligence is
still virtually unlimited. The major issue is that the more convenient an agent is,
the more it needs to know about you – preferences, timing, capacities, etc. – which
creates a tradeoff of more help requires more intrusion. This is not a black-and-
white issue – the shades of gray and associated remedies will be argued endlessly.
The record to date is that convenience overwhelms privacy. I suspect that will
continue.”
danah boyd, a principal researcher for Microsoft and founder and president of the
Data & Society Research Institute, said, “AI is a tool that will be used by humans
for all sorts of purposes, including in the pursuit of power. There will be abuses
of power that involve AI, just as there will be advances in science and
humanitarian efforts that also involve AI. Unfortunately, there are certain trend
lines that are likely to create massive instability. Take, for example, climate
change and climate migration. This will further destabilize Europe and the U.S.,
and I expect that, in panic, we will see AI be used in harmful ways in light of
other geopolitical crises.”
Amy Webb, founder of the Future Today Institute and professor of strategic
foresight at New York University, commented, “The social safety net structures
currently in place in the U.S. and in many other countries around the world weren’t
designed for our transition to AI. The transition through AI will last the next 50
years or more. As we move farther into this third era of computing, and as every
single industry becomes more deeply entrenched with AI systems, we will need new
hybrid-skilled knowledge workers who can operate in jobs that have never needed to
exist before. We’ll need farmers who know how to work with big data sets.
Oncologists trained as robotocists. Biologists trained as electrical engineers. We
won’t need to prepare our workforce just once, with a few changes to the
curriculum. As AI matures, we will need a responsive workforce, capable of adapting
to new processes, systems and tools every few years. The need for these fields will
arise faster than our labor departments, schools and universities are
acknowledging. It’s easy to look back on history through the lens of present – and
to overlook the social unrest caused by widespread technological unemployment. We
need to address a difficult truth that few are willing to utter aloud: AI will
eventually cause a large number of people to be permanently out of work. Just as
generations before witnessed sweeping changes during and in the aftermath of the
Industrial Revolution, the rapid pace of technology will likely mean that Baby
Boomers and the oldest members of Gen X – especially those whose jobs can be
replicated by robots – won’t be able to retrain for other kinds of work without a
significant investment of time and effort.”
Barry Chudakov, founder and principal of Sertain Research, commented, “By 2030 the
human-machine/AI collaboration will be a necessary tool to manage and counter the
effects of multiple simultaneous accelerations: broad technology advancement,
globalization, climate change and attendant global migrations. In the past, human
societies managed change through gut and intuition, but as Eric Teller, CEO of
Google X, has said, ‘Our societal structures are failing to keep pace with the rate
of change.’ To keep pace with that change and to manage a growing list of ‘wicked
problems’ by 2030, AI – or using Joi Ito’s phrase, extended intelligence – will
value and revalue virtually every area of human behavior and interaction. AI and
advancing technologies will change our response framework and time frames (which in
turn, changes our sense of time). Where once social interaction happened in places
– work, school, church, family environments – social interactions will increasingly
happen in continuous, simultaneous time. If we are fortunate, we will follow the 23
Asilomar AI Principles outlined by the Future of Life Institute and will work
toward ‘not undirected intelligence but beneficial intelligence.’ Akin to nuclear
deterrence stemming from mutually assured destruction, AI and related technology
systems constitute a force for a moral renaissance. We must embrace that moral
renaissance, or we will face moral conundrums that could bring about human demise.
… My greatest hope for human-machine/AI collaboration constitutes a moral and
ethical renaissance – we adopt a moonshot mentality and lock arms to prepare for
the accelerations coming at us. My greatest fear is that we adopt the logic of our
emerging technologies – instant response, isolation behind screens, endless
comparison of self-worth, fake self-presentation – without thinking or responding
smartly.”
John C. Havens, executive director of the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of
Autonomous and Intelligent Systems and the Council on Extended Intelligence, wrote,
“Now, in 2018, a majority of people around the world can’t access their data, so
any ‘human-AI augmentation’ discussions ignore the critical context of who actually
controls people’s information and identity. Soon it will be extremely difficult to
identify any autonomous or intelligent systems whose algorithms don’t interact with
human data in one form or another.”
At stake is nothing less than what sort of society we want to live in and how we
experience our humanity.Batya Friedman
Batya Friedman
Batya Friedman, a human-computer interaction professor at the University of
Washington’s Information School, wrote, “Our scientific and technological
capacities have and will continue to far surpass our moral ones – that is our
ability to use wisely and humanely the knowledge and tools that we develop. …
Automated warfare – when autonomous weapons kill human beings without human
engagement – can lead to a lack of responsibility for taking the enemy’s life or
even knowledge that an enemy’s life has been taken. At stake is nothing less than
what sort of society we want to live in and how we experience our humanity.”
Greg Shannon, chief scientist for the CERT Division at Carnegie Mellon University,
said, “Better/worse will appear 4:1 with the long-term ratio 2:1. AI will do well
for repetitive work where ‘close’ will be good enough and humans dislike the work.
… Life will definitely be better as AI extends lifetimes, from health apps that
intelligently ‘nudge’ us to health, to warnings about impending heart/stroke
events, to automated health care for the underserved (remote) and those who need
extended care (elder care). As to liberty, there are clear risks. AI affects agency
by creating entities with meaningful intellectual capabilities for monitoring,
enforcing and even punishing individuals. Those who know how to use it will have
immense potential power over those who don’t/can’t. Future happiness is really
unclear. Some will cede their agency to AI in games, work and community, much like
the opioid crisis steals agency today. On the other hand, many will be freed from
mundane, unengaging tasks/jobs. If elements of community happiness are part of AI
objective functions, then AI could catalyze an explosion of happiness.”
Kostas Alexandridis, author of “Exploring Complex Dynamics in Multi-agent-based
Intelligent Systems,” predicted, “Many of our day-to-day decisions will be
automated with minimal intervention by the end-user. Autonomy and/or independence
will be sacrificed and replaced by convenience. Newer generations of citizens will
become more and more dependent on networked AI structures and processes. There are
challenges that need to be addressed in terms of critical thinking and
heterogeneity. Networked interdependence will, more likely than not, increase our
vulnerability to cyberattacks. There is also a real likelihood that there will
exist sharper divisions between digital ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots,’ as well as among
technologically dependent digital infrastructures. Finally, there is the question
of the new ‘commanding heights’ of the digital network infrastructure’s ownership
and control.”
Oscar Gandy, emeritus professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania,
responded, “We already face an ungranted assumption when we are asked to imagine
human-machine ‘collaboration.’ Interaction is a bit different, but still tainted by
the grant of a form of identity – maybe even personhood – to machines that we will
use to make our way through all sorts of opportunities and challenges. The problems
we will face in the future are quite similar to the problems we currently face when
we rely upon ‘others’ (including technological systems, devices and networks) to
acquire things we value and avoid those other things (that we might, or might not
be aware of).”
James Scofield O’Rourke, a professor of management at the University of Notre Dame,
said, “Technology has, throughout recorded history, been a largely neutral concept.
The question of its value has always been dependent on its application. For what
purpose will AI and other technological advances be used? Everything from gunpowder
to internal combustion engines to nuclear fission has been applied in both helpful
and destructive ways. Assuming we can contain or control AI (and not the other way
around), the answer to whether we’ll be better off depends entirely on us (or our
progeny). ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we
are underlings.’”
Simon Biggs, a professor of interdisciplinary arts at the University of Edinburgh,
said, “AI will function to augment human capabilities. The problem is not with AI
but with humans. As a species we are aggressive, competitive and lazy. We are also
empathic, community minded and (sometimes) self-sacrificing. We have many other
attributes. These will all be amplified. Given historical precedent, one would have
to assume it will be our worst qualities that are augmented. My expectation is that
in 2030 AI will be in routine use to fight wars and kill people, far more
effectively than we can currently kill. As societies we will be less affected by
this as we currently are, as we will not be doing the fighting and killing
ourselves. Our capacity to modify our behaviour, subject to empathy and an
associated ethical framework, will be reduced by the disassociation between our
agency and the act of killing. We cannot expect our AI systems to be ethical on our
behalf – they won’t be, as they will be designed to kill efficiently, not
thoughtfully. My other primary concern is to do with surveillance and control. The
advent of China’s Social Credit System (SCS) is an indicator of what it likely to
come. We will exist within an SCS as AI constructs hybrid instances of ourselves
that may or may not resemble who we are. But our rights and affordances as
individuals will be determined by the SCS. This is the Orwellian nightmare
realised.”
Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation, responded, “AI will
continue to concentrate power and wealth in the hands of a few big monopolies based
on the U.S. and China. Most people – and parts of the world – will be worse off.”
William Uricchio, media scholar and professor of comparative media studies at MIT,
commented, “AI and its related applications face three problems: development at the
speed of Moore’s Law, development in the hands of a technological and economic
elite, and development without benefit of an informed or engaged public. The public
is reduced to a collective of consumers awaiting the next technology. Whose notion
of ‘progress’ will prevail? We have ample evidence of AI being used to drive
profits, regardless of implications for long-held values; to enhance governmental
control and even score citizens’ ‘social credit’ without input from citizens
themselves. Like technologies before it, AI is agnostic. Its deployment rests in
the hands of society. But absent an AI-literate public, the decision of how best to
deploy AI will fall to special interests. Will this mean equitable deployment, the
amelioration of social injustice and AI in the public service? Because the answer
to this question is social rather than technological, I’m pessimistic. The fix? We
need to develop an AI-literate public, which means focused attention in the
educational sector and in public-facing media. We need to assure diversity in the
development of AI technologies. And until the public, its elected representatives
and their legal and regulatory regimes can get up to speed with these fast-moving
developments we need to exercise caution and oversight in AI’s development.”
The remainder of this report is divided into three sections that draw from hundreds
of additional respondents’ hopeful and critical observations: 1) concerns about
human-AI evolution, 2) suggested solutions to address AI’s impact, and 3)
expectations of what life will be like in 2030, including respondents’ positive
outlooks on the quality of life and the future of work, health care and education.
Some responses are lightly edited for style.
