My research question is, how we can benefit from Artificial Intelligence without causing any dangers. The reason why I am interested in this research question is that I watched a lot of movies and series about technology, and most of them were associated with Artificial Intelligence. Such as ‘I, robot’ and ‘person of interest’. They all talked about when artificial intelligence has a huge improvement, it also brings up some problems. Also, I like video games. Games nowadays will let us decide what might happen next depending on what we choose. Such as ‘Infamous Second Son’, the decision I made can let the character become evil or good. That is also a kind of Artificial Intelligence. Artificial Intelligence means intelligence exhibited by machines, which also include superintelligence (machines which can perform the best current human thoughts in a large domains). From Siri to self-driving car, artificial intelligence is now transforming its landscape to mountains of industries. It is invading into human’s life bit and bit. When I first decided to choose this research question, I already had a research direction in general. In my opinion, I think almost all people in the world might care about the question especially industries associated with Artificial intelligence. 

From a problem solving program to today’s Artificial Intelligence, AI has come a long way. In the early development of Artificial Intelligence, humans simply just putting commands in the box and it will gave us the same thing. In other words, we get what we put in. After that, humans unveiled machine learning. We get what they response. The reason why AI could be powerful are, firstly, it has a fast speed. “Signals can travel in computer at the speed of light while Neurons propagate 100 meters per second”. (Bostrom) Secondly, the size of computer can be even larger than a house while human’s brain can only stay in the skull. For human, what we think about intelligence is that there are two extreme value (Smart to Fool). However, for AI, it start at the lowest point, and it develop his intelligence from zero to mouse-level intelligence, then chimpanzee-level. And after lots of years’ hard working, it will get to human-level intelligence. But it will not stop, it will infinitely developing. As a result, it will become even smarter than human.

As we know, there are mountains of advantage of Artificial Intelligence. Firstly, the development of technology opened a new era of communication, education, and science. Machines can now recognize and translate speech even in a noisy area, such as Siri. Moreover, the Artificial intelligence also reach a new height of automation, such as Self-driving car. Mercedes-Benz, a global car manufacturer, has unveiled the autonomous bus in Netherlands and it successfully completed a 12-mile distance without breaking any driving laws. Thirdly, Artificial Intelligence might be the only way to prevent cybercrime. The rapid growth of technology also created a new kind of criminal: cyber criminals. From the source of Intel Security Group, more than 400 billion dollar was lost in the global economy because of cybercrime. More importantly, our personal information would be easily to accessible through the internet. The process for taking down the cybercrime is too hard for humans. However, it is easy for AI because the process need prediction, classification and control of complex system. “Interestingly enough, the solution may be too advanced for humans but doable for something created by humans: Artificial Intelligence. The rate at which digital crime occurs leaves little hope for human intervention to prevail without human error. AI has a much better chance at detecting and analyzing appropriate defenses against cybercrime because it, too, is a product of technology.” (Tatera, 2)  Artificial Intelligence actually being used already in some capacities. “Watson”, IBM’s AI computer, was known as the winner of Jeopardy! which is an American television show featuring quiz competition in 2008 by defeating two of the most successful player on the show. IBM used Watch to apply algorithms in order to watch for and identify any new threats. Fourthly, for Health care. “Companies are leveraging AI to transform health care, specifically in the areas of precision medicine, genetic testing, diagnostics and therapies.”(Guzowski, 3) The latest new also showing that Artificial intelligence could be used to identify skin cancer. Fifth, for the economic part, AI could use for solve some complex problem. Such as demand, production, equilibrium prices and quantities. They can all be directly observed instead of calculating. Since economists can compute point prediction and theoretical models (Noussair, 82), it could also evaluate the changes. And it is possible that AI could create an ideal economic network if the technique is mature and let the AI has access to data. In the future, Artificial Intelligence would play an important role on human life.

However, there is no denying that Artificial Intelligence might cause some dangers if we teach it in wrong ways. “Before the prospect of an intelligence explosion, we humans are like small children playing with a bomb. Such is the mismatch between the power of our plaything and the immaturity of our product.” (Bostrom) Humans always want the machines matching humans in general intelligence from the invention of computer in 1943. When humans could actually let the dream come true, we began to fear. We were afraid that machines would replace humans. There was a myth about King Midas. He always wish all the things he touches would become gold. In one day, he actually had the power. Everything he touched became to gold. However, when he touched his lovely daughter, she turned to gold. The myth is not only talking about greed, but also as an illustration of things we created are too powerful to control. Firstly, Artificial Intelligence could take out many jobs which would cause the unemployment rate increase. Such as farmers and Taxi drivers. They can all replace by AI Robots. From CNBC Technology, Artificial Intelligence would eliminate six percent of jobs in US in five years. Second, Google’s Alpha Go AI won the world best Go (a kind of board game) player. It was just a kind of AI which only good at one area, Go. However, what if AI can master thousands of things in different area. That is actually happened and it is called superintelligence. “If it starts acquiring resources to accomplish its goals: The seemingly harmless chess goal therefore motivates harmful activities like breaking into computers and robbing banks.”(Muller, 3) As the Muller mentioned in “Editorial: Risks of Artificial Intelligence”, there is a little chance that superintelligence would rather be extremely good or extremely bad. Even there are only one percent the plane we take will crash, we still think it is too dangerous to take the plane. AI become might be evil because they have some values that are contrary to humans’. Think about if we tell the Artificial Intelligence to make humans laugh. At first, it might do some amusing action to gain the laugh. If Artificial Intelligence find a more effective way by putting electrode into the facial muscles and make humans laugh forever, it would be a disastrous thing. Although it was exaggerated, if the superintelligence become dangerous and uncontrollable, it might cause the extinction of humans. Thirdly, What if some well-funded nongovernment organization created automatic killing machine in order to control the world. It would also cause a lot of trouble to countries and citizens. ‘The terminator’ is a good example. 

“However smart a technology may become, it is still a tool to serve human purposes” (Etzioni, 3)

We all know that what Artificial Intelligence could bring to us. Consequently, we need the solution for the question, how we can benefit from Artificial Intelligence without causing any risks. Different people might have different opinions. Some people said that we should never develop the thing anymore since we all know it is dangerous while others thought that we could actually let the AI grow without any limitation. Some people believed that putting the AI into a box is a good solution, but how do you make sure that it will not get out by himself. Lots of people simply believed that human can just simply keep the AI in control. Even we can control it at the beginning, we could not keep it forever. Sooner or later, it will out. Because how can a creature control another creature which is smarter than it. Can chimpanzee keep human in a box? The answer is definitely no. As a result, the solution is actually every hard to find. I looked up a few sources, and what I list below were the two that I think are reasonable solutions. The first one is we can use AI guardian to guard AI. In order word, let one kind of AI to control another. “All societies throughout history have had oversight systems. Workers have supervisors; businesses have accountants; schoolteachers have principals. That is, all these systems have hierarchies in the sense that the first line operators are subject to oversight by a second layer and are expected to respond to corrective signals from the overseers.” (Etzioni, 3) From the article “Designing AI Systems that Obey Our Laws and Values.” We knew that there are four kinds of AI guardians. The first one is Interrogators. There are some questions human could not give the definite answer, where Interrogator AI would shows up. The second one is Monitor. We need a kind AI to detect whether the AI would break the law or not. For example self-driving car violate the speed limit. Enforcer, as the third one, help enforce and build a flawless law about AI. The forth one is Ethic bots which in my opinion, is the most important one. AI not only obey the laws, but the sense of our value as well. If AI guardian can control AI well, there is not such a risk as the extinction due to AI. However, the solution also caused another question, who will guard the AI guardian. Humans must have the final say about it. The other way was that when we create and teach the AI machine, we also need to teach them sense of our values. (Grady) Because when it get out, we still do not be panic since it share our values which means it is on our sides. It was different comparing to the Ethic bots because we therefore do not need the AI guardian. They can figure out what is good and bad by themselves. It has no difference to a human who is well-trained. For example, if a child did not get well-educated and his parents did not even care about him, he has a big chance to become a rascal. If the kid was well-educated, he will has few chance to behave badly. If we are afraid of what would happened if superintelligence lose control, we might never have big progress on developing AI. As Bostrom said: “I don’t think just ringing the bell and screaming is actually what the world needs, it needs to get on with the actual hard work”

For how to solve the risks of AI, different answers deal with different questionings. A superintelligence system needs substantial and subtle training which is hard for an individuals to do such a thing as operating a superintelligence. Superintelligence might not be a problem because it cannot do thing, it only can think. As Grady Booch said, comparing to super doing, super knowing is very different. After all, all of these AI should have on and off switch. So when the nightmare really come true, we can simply unplug it. 

“We are on an incredible journey of coevolution with our machines. The humans we are today are not the humans we will be then.” (Bostrom) We do not need to care about what bad consequence it would bring to us. It actually would be a big problem since there are still lots of issues we have to attend nowadays because of the rise of AI. Such as how do we let the Artificial Intelligence be accepted. “The next question you might ask yourself is, should we fear it? Now, every new technology brings with it some measure of trepidation. When we first saw cars, people lamented that we would see the destruction of the family. When we first saw telephones come in, people were worried it would destroy all civil conversation. At a point in time we saw the written word become pervasive, people thought we would lose our ability to memorize. These things are all true to a degree, but it's also the case that these technologies brought to us things that extended the human experience in some profound ways.”(Booch) Actually, we do not need to put our attention to the danger of Artificial Intelligence. It would be a big distraction if we keep thinking the bad way AI would bring to us. 

In conclusion, the answer to how we can benefit from Artificial Intelligence without causing any risks is that human should teach the AI humans’ sense of value when we teach and build it.  From my perspective, humans must let all the Artificial Intelligence have the on and off switch. Although teaching the AI sense of our value is a good way, we still need to be careful in case situations out of controls. As the Nick Bostrom said, “But the more of the control problem that we solve in advance, the better the odds that the transition to the machine intelligence era will go well. This to me looks like a thing that is well worth doing and I can imagine that if things turn out okay, that people a million years from now look back at this century and it might well be that they say that the one thing we did that really mattered was to get this thing right.” There are still a long way to get through all these problems. Until today, AI has already brought to us too much surprise than we expected. How much benefit can we gain from Artificial Intelligence in the future is unknown. And we are just at the beginning now. 
