Erin Kelly

CEO and Co-Founder, askpolly.ai

As I am sure has happened to many tech CEOs this week, I’ve been contacted by a number of journalists to ask whether I, too, believe the human race will be made extinct by AI.  Before I answer that, let me be clear about what most people from the science and tech world mean when they say ‘’extinct.’’  It means that we will evolve into something else, not that we will cease to exist or have any future descendants. And if history is any indication, evolution will almost certainly be to our benefit.

As a species, we have been evolving continuously for millions of years, gradually, contentedly, and positively.  It hasn’t been scary, it’s been good.  Agriculture, medicine and technology have arguably sped up that evolution.  Before dairying, adult humans did not and could not digest lactose.  In one of the fastest selection signals ever found in the human genome, the allele for adult lactase persistence swept through Europe and some parts of the Middle East and Africa.  We evolved.  Same can be said for our ability to metabolize alcohol (for better or worse), starch and resistance to various diseases such as malaria.  Agriculture made our ancestral genes extinct, replacing them with new ones, more adapted to our new lifestyle.  Does anyone mourn that or wish we could go back to the good ol’ days of only drinking water?

Technology and AI will speed that evolution still further.  We are already seeing research with brain-computer interfaces (BCI) driving robotic exoskeletons that allow people previously confined to a wheelchair to walk again.  You can see how gradually, over time, this might move from just being a technology that helps paraplegics to being an enhancement for all people – this implant allows me to calculate faster, speak more languages, etc.  Should we fear this?  Undoubtedly some will.  Others will embrace it the way they embrace implants today.  Should we regulate it?  Should we say ‘’if G-d wanted you to be a math genius he would have made you that way.  Be happy with your mediocrity!’’  These are the questions the ethicists want us to ponder.  And we should ponder them.  But can we do it without the fear-mongering?

There is always the threat that any tool can be used as a weapon, and we should ponder that too.  But regulation is rarely helpful in warfare.  If the Russians want to drop a nuke on us, saying ‘’But we have a regulation against that’’ is not a defense.  Deterrence and diplomacy are.  That’s why we need AI sovereignty.  Taking the moral high ground might give us a good conscience today, until another country with better technology subjugates us because they have implants that let them think faster and advanced surveillance tools to keep us in line.  At that point we might be wishing we’d invested in the data centers when we still had the opportunity.  The answer to tech as a weapon has always been to keep up.