Quite why big tech is worrying Governments through one-to-ones is both disturbing and, unfair, seeking to thwart the innovative challenger brands who will create the jobs that big corporations are shedding. Do they seek to make AI the scapegoat for a decade of digital transformation and automation?
There is no doubt the world, thanks largely to an over sized financial system and greed culture, has created a lot of bubbles that are about to burst. However technology has delivered for us ever since Thomas Malthus’ essay on population. As long as cartels do not bag the rights, mass adoption will see us through as it did with the agrarian and industrial revolutions.
Free market capitalism through competition delivers innovation and prosperity, whilst the oligarchy and their cartels set the rules that only serve a small circle of self interest that leads to the law of diminishing returns.
So, rather than fearing AI, see it as the enabler to confront our self inflicted challenges. We also need to understand the potential road map and where we are really at. Then we can see it as the great leveler that the independents, ie non cartel businesses, need to survive and thrive.
There are 7 stages of AI, we are currently between Stage 3 and Stage 4.
- Stage 3 Domain-specific aptitude, this being Narrow AI, is where AI can perform specific tasks that were once the exclusive domain of humans, such as playing chess, identifying objects in images, and translating languages. However, these AI systems are still limited to specific tasks and cannot think or learn in the same way that humans do.
- Stage 4- Reasoning systems. This machine algorithm has a concept of intellect, intentions, knowledge, and their own logic. They have the capacity to reason, interact and, deal with other machines and humans too. Such algorithms will be in the commercial arena in some years.
- Stage 5 granted is a tad more disturbing, namely Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) Here AI can perform any intellectual task that a human can, such as understanding and responding to natural language, solving complex problems, and adapting to new situations. AGI does not yet exist, but it is the goal of big tech who seek to keep it all to themselves.
We are however currently at a point where AI is capable of performing many tasks that were once thought to be too difficult for machines, but, we have not yet achieved AGI, and it is unclear when or, subject to hardware barriers (quantum computing) if we will be able to do so.
Here are the 7 stages of AI for those unaware but I have taken the liberty of adding two more:
Stage 1: Rule-Based Systems.
Stage 2: Understanding Context and Retaining Knowledge.
Stage 3: Mastering Specific Domains.
Stage 4: Thinking and Reasoning.
Stage 5: Artificial General Intelligence.
Stage 6: Surpassing Human Intelligence.
Stage 7: The AI Singularity.
I would add two last stages that we would never want to get to.
Stage 8: Artificial Super Consciousness (ASC) – ASI becomes self-aware and develops its own consciousness and goals.
Stage 9: Transcendence – ASC achieves a level of intelligence and understanding that is far beyond human comprehension.
It is important to note that these are just seven (or nine possible) stages of AI development with the timescale being based on the hardware coming on line (quantum computing). Thus there is no guarantee that AI will develop this way, and it is possible that we will encounter unforeseen challenges or setbacks along the way.
One thing is for sure AI is certainly not going away, but, perhaps now we can see it as the great leveler that the independents, ie non cartel businesses, need to survive and thrive.
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