A Survey Completed by AI Experts
According to research entitled When Will AI Exceed Human Performance, there is a 50% chance that artificial intelligence (AI) systems will be able to perform any job imaginable by the year 2140. The research also shows that all human jobs are expected to be automated by AI.
The team of researchers from Oxford and Yale University conducted a survey. Over 1,600 academics who had previously presented at conferences on AI were asked to complete the survey. The researchers received responses from 352 academics.
The purpose of the survey is to assist in anticipating the innovation in AI and machine learning, in order to develop public policy. The predicted applications of AI should serve as a warning as to how the job market and economy will be able adapt with this growing increase in smart technology.
Questions in the survey asked the experts to predict probabilities to dates in the future when AI would be capable of performing specific jobs such as translating languages and folding laundry. The experts were also asked when machines could be predicted to be superior to humans in fulfilling specific human occupations such as surgery or writing. They were also asked what they thought the social impacts of AI dominating the workforce could be.
The responses taken were combined by the researchers to calculate the median number of years it would take for AI to reach key milestones in human capabilities.
The Results
The results predict that in just over five years truck and taxi drivers will be competing with ‘Johnny Cab’- like automated drivers. Robots will be more skilled at folding laundry then humans in about six years. In seven years AI will be better then all humans at playing the mobile game Angry Birds. Within a decade AI can be expected to win the World Series Poker series. AI can be expected to create a top charting pop song within twelve years and write a best-selling novel in 26 years.
The High Level Machine Intelligence refers to the point when artificial intelligence becomes better than humans at almost every task. Researchers have predicted a fifty percent chance for artificial intelligence being better than humans at almost everything. And they expect it to happen in just under fifty years. Experts believe by the year 2140 AI will be capable of doing any imaginable job possible.
Johnny Cab the Robot Taxi Driver from film Total Recall Released 1990
AI Smarter Than Its Creator
Acclaimed physicist Stephen Hawking in 2015 was asked on Reddit on whether AI could become more intelligent than its creator. Hawking responded;
“It’s clearly possible for a something to acquire higher intelligence than its ancestors: we evolved to be smarter than our ape-like ancestors, and Einstein was smarter than his parents. The line you ask about is where an AI becomes better than humans at AI design, so that it can recursively improve itself without human help. If this happens, we may face an intelligence explosion that ultimately results in machines whose intelligence exceeds ours by more than ours exceeds that of snails.”
Experts appear to agree with Hawkings, as the survey also asked about the likelihood of a “AI Intelligence Explosion” which would be the point when AI becomes better at AI design than humans. The researchers were asked in specially about the chances of an intelligence explosion on happening within two years of machines outperforming their human counterparts in both skill and cost with a prediction given of forty-five years. These predictions are however only an educated guess and only time will tell if Skynet is humanity's future.
