Hot of the press, here is a short video of Rishi Sunak, the UK Prime Minister, interviewing Elon Musk, the world’s richest man about the impact that artificial intelligence will have on humankind in the future. Musk likens AI to a genie. It will make us think about the meaning of life. People will work if they want to not because they have to, which makes me think. I believe that it is good for us if we work. We have to work as our bodies and minds are programmed in our DNA to work towards a purpose. The ultimate purpose is survival. If we don’t have to work to survive it might be the biggest challenge that we have ever faced. Laziness is one of the human evils. It is a surefire way to degenerate into bad habits that wreak life.
I don’t agree with the caption in the video. I think Musk said things that Sunak would agree with and accept. So how will AI affect how we look after our cats! The 64,000-dollar question for this site.
“[AI is] the most disruptive force in human history….There will come a point where no job is needed. You can have a job if you want a job for personal satisfaction, but the AI will be able to do it.”
Elon Musk
Well, if Musk is correct, we won’t have to clean out the litter tray anymore! That’s one chore we can tick off. If all jobs can be taken from us, it would mean that cat breeders would be robots. What would they produce if left to their own devices? Perhaps a super-sharp fluffy cat who might even be able to do things for us too.
AI role in cat confinement
There may come a time when all cats have to be confined to the home except when allowed out on a lead. My imagination leads me to envisage a robot taking a domestic cat for a walk on a lead. The cat would have been bred by robots to be very trainable and the cat would have been trained meticulously to walk on a lead like a dog.
Inside the home, the confined domestic cat would be entertained by an AI robot who’d tirelessly mentally stimulate the cat. No problems of boredom. Tons of play-hunting. And I’d expect the AI robot to look like a cat! Why not?
The way the evolution of the domestic cat is going and the way the cat is being confined to the home to protect wildlife, I can see cats being quite different in the long-term future. They’ll be bred by robots to be very comfortable living inside all their lives. They may be bred to have no claws and no canine teeth! And forget about being allergic to cats. That problem will be resolved by AI quite rapidly. It’ll entail gene editing cats! Yes, we’ll be living with a different kind of creature; perhaps in fact an AI-driven robot that looks exactly like today’s domestic cat.
End of animal companionship?
I could go a step further and suggest that robots will substitute domestic cats and dogs in the future as they would be excellent companions who’d know their humans better than they know themselves. AI might spell the end of animal companionship.
Of course, we are looking many years into the future; perhaps hundreds of years from now. But I think we have to try and envisage what life will be like with AI as part of our lives. Musk says it will radically transform our lives. The genie is out of the bottle. It just depends on how we use the genie. To our advantage or the opposite.
Increased conflict?
There is no doubt that people with malevolent intentions will use AI to gain power and in doing so there’ll be a heightened risk of conflict. You can see how AI can give the alpha male an edge against the competition. I can foresee huge potential problems. Musk described AI as “the most disruptive force in human history”.
Can humankind manage AI? We can’t manage global warming!
Humankind will have to be wise in its use of AI. Can we rise to the occasion? At the moment humankind is demonstrating behavior that gives me cause for concern about its ability to manage AI to its benefit. Humankind appears to be too stupid. I am referring to collective behavior. There are many wise and great people. But collectively look at us: two wars running simultaneously and the Covid pandemic was caused by gross human negligence (Wuhan biolab) and/or cruel behavior (against animals – Wuhan wet market).
Used for research
In these early moments, I currently use AI to help me research articles as it speeds up my work. AI can call upon a vast database of information and present it in good English. Although I don’t cut and paste. I always read, digest and rework the information. At the moment online AI has information that cuts off at around Sept 2021 so it is not current on recently developments. I have not used AI to write this.
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The interview
The interview by Sunak is unprecedented in terms of a prime minister interviewing a businessman. It lasted 40 minutes. I’ll try and add the full interview when it is published.
It took place at the Bletchley Park AI conference organised by the UK government. It led to the Bletchley Declaration on AI. A representative from China attended. An immediate problem with AI is that it may dramatically interfere with the democratic process. What about Putin and his desire to interfere with elections in other countries to serve his purposes?
Sunak, quite rightly, wants Britain to be a leader in AI and replicate Silicon Valley in the USA. He wants British entrepreneurs to work with AI and be “unafraid to give up the security of a regular paycheck”. And to be “comfortable with failing” as that is how you can use AI to grow the UK economy which is vital at the moment to create wealth and paydown the huge national debt of £2.4 trillion.
