Why Artificial Intelligence Won't Turn on Us

"Do we run the risk of creating machines that can really think and turn on us? Well, you could have asked this very same question fifty years ago and many scientists at that time would have answered that thinking machines were ready to appear. But this didn't happen. So, the truth is that current artificial intelligence is not about thinking machines and we should not be afraid of that. It is about extracting information from data, pattern recognition, language processes and many other things. Current AI is incredibly smart in doing this kind of task, but it is not intelligent in a human like sense," says Riccardo Zecchina, Vodafone Chair in Machine Learning and Data Science at Bocconi, in the seventh episode of the Clarity in a Messy World podcast, aptly titled "AI Beyond Sci-Fi".

There are plenty of Sci-Fi movies and tv series with fulfilled predictions, Professor Zecchina says to podcast host David Wayne Callahan, but almost all that was said about AI proved to be wrong. In the same way, "I'm pretty sure that AI evolution will be different from what we can imagine: reality is more creative than imagination. I think that a great deal of understanding will come from connecting current AI and neuroscience and that we will observe fantastic results coming out in the next few years."

As for threats to humankind, "rather than be worried that AI can turn on us, I would be worried about climate change," Professor Zecchina says.

Clarity in a Messy World, hosted by David W. Callahan, is the Bocconi podcast that looks at the causes behind the most confounding issues of our time. You can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Spreaker, and YouTube.