I don't really want to come across as hostile to the views of such a well respect physicist, but this article represents the view which is often held by those who are very intelligent yet lack the actual study of AI.
Anybody who has actually, or is currently, studying AI will know that there are fundamental differences in programming "AI" and some self aware magic computation which is almost entirely unfathomable. With current knowledge, at least, the only way to have any sort of learning is to design and implement algorithms to do so. There can of course be incredibly abstract knowledge base designs and the computation can assimilate incredibly complex knowledge from those, however it is almost a logical fallacy to suggest that we would ever lose control of something autonomous due to some sort of "rogue agent".
Of course, there are very real risks with something like AI, but it's much less sinister than what the article suggests. For example, faulty code or errors in the knowledge base could lead it to make a bad decision, but humans can also do that.
I don't think we should be dismissing the risks necessarily, but I do believe that it is completely far fetched to say we would be making the worst mistake in history if we are to dismiss a film as science fiction!
Anybody who has actually, or is currently, studying AI will know that there are fundamental differences in programming "AI" and some self aware magic computation which is almost entirely unfathomable. With current knowledge, at least, the only way to have any sort of learning is to design and implement algorithms to do so. There can of course be incredibly abstract knowledge base designs and the computation can assimilate incredibly complex knowledge from those, however it is almost a logical fallacy to suggest that we would ever lose control of something autonomous due to some sort of "rogue agent".
Of course, there are very real risks with something like AI, but it's much less sinister than what the article suggests. For example, faulty code or errors in the knowledge base could lead it to make a bad decision, but humans can also do that.
I don't think we should be dismissing the risks necessarily, but I do believe that it is completely far fetched to say we would be making the worst mistake in history if we are to dismiss a film as science fiction!