A quick note on a recent post by AI and robotics expert Rodney Brooks, from his blog largely focused on misconceptions about AI and its imminent takeover. The post dated May 17th 2019 is titled AGI has been delayed (A-rtificial G-eneral I-ntelligence). Brooks looks into the state of the art technology of autonomous cars and, informed by these observations, predicts that AGI, an artificial intelligence with the same versatility and adaptability as a human intelligence will not occur before 2300.

Brooks writes a short paragraph about the dangers of AI that rings very true with some of my current concerns:

“what does [the fact that autonomous cars are not to be around for another few decades]  say about predictions that AGI is just around the corner? And what does it say about it being an existential threat to humanity any time soon. We have plenty of existential threats to humanity lining up to bash us in the short term, including climate change, plastics in the oceans, and a demographic inversion. If AGI is a long way off then we can not say anything sensible today about what promises or threats it might provide as we need to completely re-engineer our world long before it shows up, and if when it does show up it will be in a world that we can not yet predict.”