The Future of Humans in an AI World

Movies like The Matrix and Ex Machina really get us excited (and maybe a little scared) about a future where machines rule over us. Will we become extinct, or worse, just batteries for our robot overlords? Well, let’s take a deep breath. The current abilities of AI, even the much-hyped ChatGPT, aren’t quite there yet. It’s smart, but not “take-over-the-world” smart. So, are we safe? For now, yes—but let’s not get too comfortable just yet.

We humans have come a long way, evolving over millions of years and hitting our stride in the last century. We’ve split atoms, created bombs that could flatten continents, sent machines to other planets, and even snapped a picture of the universe’s baby photo—the cosmic microwave background. But when does this rapid progress stop? Does it end with us jetting off to other galaxies, or with us building the ultimate AI, the one that could mark the pinnacle (or doom) of human evolution?

The story of AI started in the 1940s with Alan Turing, who had this wild idea that machines could think like humans. Fast forward to the 1950s, and AI officially became a thing, thanks to the Dartmouth Conference. Despite a few bumps in the road (hello, AI Winters), the field took off. The 1980s and 1990s saw AI getting smarter, like when IBM’s Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov. By the 2000s, AI was everywhere—in our phones, our cars, and even our homes. And today, AI is more mainstream than a viral TikTok dance, with powerful systems like DeepMind’s AlphaGo and OpenAI’s GPT-3 pushing the limits of what’s possible.

But let’s get real about today’s AI. What we have now is “Narrow AI,” which means it’s great at specific tasks—like generating text, driving cars, or mixing chemicals—but it’s not a jack-of-all-trades like us humans. We’ve got 100 billion neurons in our brains that let us multitask like pros, while AI is still stuck in single-task mode. Honestly, the term “AI” is thrown around so loosely these days, it’s almost misleading. Most AI programs are just fancy math models trained on huge datasets. Nothing too magical, really.

Now, here’s where it gets interesting—or scary, depending on your perspective. How close are we to creating General AI, the kind that can do all the things we can, but better? If we get there, we’re talking about a machine that can evolve in minutes what took us millions of years. It could take over mundane jobs, cure diseases, reverse climate change, and travel to the farthest reaches of space. Sounds like a dream, right? But then again, what would this super-smart AI want? Would it even need us around? To a super-intelligent AI, we might be what ants are to us—cute, but not exactly crucial. And as we often ignore ants, this AI might just ignore us. Or not. Who knows?

Here’s the twist: all our assumptions about AI’s future are based on how we see the world. But who’s to say an AI would think like us? Maybe our human consciousness isn’t the best model for understanding what a super-intelligent AI might do. With that thought, I’ll leave you to ponder what lies ahead. One thing’s for sure—it’s going to be a wild ride!