The first and most obvious problem with the current press coverage of the AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) field of development is that there is almost NO actual AGI field of development. Although large corporations like IBM (Watson), Google (Deep Learning) and others like to paint the picture that they are really 'getting somewhere', the opposite is actually true. The stuff that those companies work on is only a small amount above the results that have been accomplished over the last many decades, and are therefore still at the level of 'pretty smart software' but nowhere near anything that resembles even the intelligence and capabilities of a little child. IBM's Watson is basically a rather good search engine, without any real cognitive abilities or capabilities for making actual decisions. And Google's Deep Learning project is based on pattern recognition algorithms that were researched for decades already, but remain just that: pattern recognition. There is currently no actual research that gives any promise of 'artificial neural networks' (as used by Google and others) ever being capable of supporting higher orders of reasoning, let alone something like 'machine consciousness'.

The other big problem with 'fear for AI' is the simple fact that people tend to distrust that what they don't understand. And as soon as something (or someone) is more intelligent than we are, we see that as a thread instead of an opportunity (to learn).

Hollywood has helped to strengthen this idea by linking the concept of 'highly intelligent' predominantly to the villain in the story: the evil genius. This predates the whole 'AI is dangerous' debate by decades, or even more. So now the 'genius' is a machine, and therefore a 'genius machine' must, of course, be evil. The actual reality, as we currently can observe in humans and is documented in many scientific studies, is that highly intelligent people tend to also have a higher sense of fairness and even justice. They also have a much more compassionate view of society and are driven to think about solutions rather than 'creating problems'. The logical expectation for Artificial Super Intelligence is for it to be able to think about anything and everything in much more detail and consideration, simply because that capacity goes hand in hand with 'having higher levels of intelligence'.

Finally, I don't really understand the positions and statements of people like the ones mentioned above. They are known for their intelligence, business acumen and in some cases scientific insights, but clearly fail to put current AI-developments into a sensible scope and time-frame and obviously don't seem to understand that 'intelligence' is not an isolated feat. Because the only way that we can achieve human-level Artificial Intelligence is to incorporate everything else that makes us human.

About the author:

Hans Peter is the founder and CEO of MIND|CONSTRUCT. He has experience with more than 20 programming languages, has over 30 years of experience in IT, and broad expertise in software engineering, software quality assurance, project management and business process engineering. Besides this, Hans Peter has been a serial entrepreneur for more than 30 years now, has worked as a business coach and consultant in many projects and has worked several years as teacher in the domain of software development.