Saturday, August 12, 2017

Fear Skynet? Meh

Elon Musk is worried about Artificial Intelligence (AI).  He holds that it is far more dangerous than nuclear-armed North Korea.  However, he also posits that we are living in a computer simulation.  If we are nothing but a computer simulation - just so many AI versions of people in a super advanced computer - then an AI takeover has already happened, hasn't it?  Elon needs to reconcile his beliefs.

Much like the panic the preceded Y2K, the AI concerns are overblown.  A great deal of effort is spent in making computers secure from hacking, an unending process that always seeks to patch exploits that are found in each new line of code.  Those who are worried about the coming takeover by Skynet forget that Norton, Vipre, Sophos, Kaspersky, McAfee, and countless others make a living by preventing the sort of destructive intrusion that the feared all-powerful AI needs to do in order to become all-powerful.

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