Does AI pose an existential risk to humanity?

well, to answer such a question, we have to form a deep understanding of both how our brain works and then how does the machines work?

to cause a risk let alone an existential one, you should have certain requirements such as intent emotions and motivation, basically you should have what Jeff Hawkins called the old brain in his book a thousand Brains which I highly recommend everyone to read, which controls all the emotions and reflexes, that old brain is something belongs to humans and humans only for now, as for AI, right now there is no such thing. The artificial intelligence we have nowadays is far from intelligent, let alone human intelligence.

AI is relying on a principle called deep learning, which trained artificial neural networks to learn and make predictions or decisions. It is inspired by the structure and function of the human brain, specifically the interconnected network of neurons.

Deep learning algorithms are designed to automatically learn hierarchical representations of data by using multiple layers of interconnected artificial neurons, known as neural networks. These networks can be extremely complex, with thousands or even millions of interconnected neurons.

layering or hierarchal representation is the traditional theory that we always thought our Brain works and learn through but there are new theory that suggests otherwise, the new theory called a thousand brains which again was proposed by Jeff Hawkins, he basically suggests that our brain works by forming thousands of models of the world, how we do that and which model we choose and go by on our daily basis is not fully understood yet as everything related to the brain, but again if you are interested in more details check a thousand brain theory

they are both theories and whether you prefer one or another, they are both incomplete, we have a very long way to cross before we fully understand our brain, it’s mechanism of learning and evolution, let alone learning how to replicate it in an artificial intelligence.

now, that we have a brief overview, let’s go back to what risk does AI pose to our existence?

as I suggested previously to mean harm to others, you have to have a bad intent, strong emotions and willing, you have to be able to plan, think for yourself and cooperate with others, all are skills that our artificial intelligence lacks today, and it will be long before we will be able to embed these skills in a machine, because for that to happen, we need to fully understand how we humans do it, then replicates it to a machine regardless of the technical problems we will face after we figure out our brain.

what are the ways AI can pose a threat to humanity, theoretically regardless of all the obstacles?

well, first and that is close to a science fiction, AI evolve so fast that it surpass our intelligence which is usually refer to as AGI. is that a possibility ?

well, to answer such a question you need to understand the current AI abilities and potentials, well to simplify thing, the best AI right now matches the intelligence of a 5 years old, AI lacks AGI, which refers to artificial general intelligence, in simpler words, AI can excel and surpass humans in certain tasks, However, the current AI lack the broad generalization and adaptability that humans possess. Human intelligence encompasses various cognitive abilities, including creativity, common sense reasoning, emotional intelligence, and a deep understanding of the world.

even if we develop an AI that resembles the humans adaptability and intelligence, and even if they surpass our intelligence, which is highly unlikely to be achieved any time soon, knowledge and technology whether they were used to evil or good purpose, they take time to be developed, data need to be collected, experiments to be performed, it takes time to learn and progress, we humans are here today because of years of discoveries and accomplishments of our fellow scientists, nevertheless theses machines will have obstacles as we have, so you can rule out this threat, it is unrealistic and it is closer to a science fiction to a reality.

However, these super-intelligent machines will replace humans in various fields of study, work, etc.

now let’s move to the second possible threat, disobedience of machine.

is it even possible? for the sake of simplicity, the available machines work as follows: we give them tasks, they do it according to the best way they learn from the models we provided them with at the time of training, and remember the deep learning process.

so we are safe as long as they do just that, to propose that an AI will disobey the instructions, is somewhat unrealistic and based on a misunderstanding of how it works. why?

if we assign a goal, no matter how benign it is, the ones who are afraid of machine disobedience, suggest, it will go out of its way to complete it, even if we ask the machine to stop, to the length that it might do some outrageous things that end up harming the humanity or draining the earth resources, well why do they suggest that the machine will obey the first order and ignore the rest?

yes, as simple as that, let alone that we already discussed that AI does not have a willingness to act on its own, to give such things as willingness, motivation, emotions, and intentions, we need years of research and experiments to accomplish such things.

there are so much aspects you can think of as machine rising, that it might rise and kill or enslave all human kind, this is all however entertaining is a pure science fiction, I believe we are the ones who holds the key to either our thrive or demise based on the future decision we might choose to make, individually or collectively, to develop such amazing invention as AI, it requires a true intelligent beings as ourselves, thousands of years of research and evolution whether the scientific or the genetic one is hard and outstanding, we all should take a moment to celebrate our achievements and stop fearing the future.

if anyone could pose an existential risk to humans it is humans themselves, remember the spark that led to the WW1, read history and analyze it bit by bit, you will always find out the same old reason to all kind of disasters no matter what the means were, the responsible is the same, the humans and the results are quite the same, we have evolved but we still keep a primitive piece of our ancestors, the old brain.