Chapter 14
Summary: What’s Wrong with AI?
Humanistic Technology Needed!
The end is near… We have arrived at the end of the book, and it is time to summarize
our findings and to wrap up. The great potentials of the digital revolution cannot be denied.
However, we need to think twice how to use this technology, so it will be at our service and not
endanger what humanity has built over centuries. The lessons of wars and revolutions should
not be forgotten. We need technology that empowers people, while helping us to coordinate
our actions, so conflict is avoided. In this book, I have presented quite a lot of ideas how this
can be done, and how to avoid the dark sides of the digital revolution. Therefore, I hope we
will soon see humanistic digital technology that helps us live in harmony with nature.
14.1 AI on the Rise
There are probably not many people who would doubt that we have arrived in an age
of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Of course, this opens up many previously
untapped opportunities, ranging from production to automated driving and everyday
applications. In fact, not only digital assistants such as Google Home, Siri or Alexa,
but also many Web services and apps, smartphones and home appliances, cleaning
robots and even toys already use AI or at least some kind of machine learning.
Technology visionaries such as Ray Kurzweil (*1948) predicted that AI would
have the power of an insect brain in 2000, the power of a mouse brain around
2010, human-like brainpower around 2020 and the power of all human brains on
Earth before the middle of this century. Many do not share this extremely technooptimistic view, but it cannot be denied that back in 1997 IBM’s Deep Blue computer
beat the Chess genius Garry Kasparov (*1963), that IBM’s Watson computer won
the knowledge game Jeopardy back in 1997, and that Google’s AlphaGo system beat
the world champion Lee Sedol (*1983) in the highly complex strategy game “Go” in
2016—about 10–20 years before many experts had expected this to happen. When
This chapter appeared before as FuturICT Blog (September 1, 2019) http://futurict.blogspot.
com/2019/09/whats-wrong-with-ai.html and in the SI Magazine—the SwissInformatics Society’s
New Online Platform (March 2020), see https://magazine.swissinformatics.org/en/whats-wrongwith-ai/.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
D. Helbing, Next Civilization,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62330-2_14
285
Summary: What’s Wrong with AI?
Humanistic Technology Needed!
The end is near… We have arrived at the end of the book, and it is time to summarize
our findings and to wrap up. The great potentials of the digital revolution cannot be denied.
However, we need to think twice how to use this technology, so it will be at our service and not
endanger what humanity has built over centuries. The lessons of wars and revolutions should
not be forgotten. We need technology that empowers people, while helping us to coordinate
our actions, so conflict is avoided. In this book, I have presented quite a lot of ideas how this
can be done, and how to avoid the dark sides of the digital revolution. Therefore, I hope we
will soon see humanistic digital technology that helps us live in harmony with nature.
14.1 AI on the Rise
There are probably not many people who would doubt that we have arrived in an age
of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Of course, this opens up many previously
untapped opportunities, ranging from production to automated driving and everyday
applications. In fact, not only digital assistants such as Google Home, Siri or Alexa,
but also many Web services and apps, smartphones and home appliances, cleaning
robots and even toys already use AI or at least some kind of machine learning.
Technology visionaries such as Ray Kurzweil (*1948) predicted that AI would
have the power of an insect brain in 2000, the power of a mouse brain around
2010, human-like brainpower around 2020 and the power of all human brains on
Earth before the middle of this century. Many do not share this extremely technooptimistic view, but it cannot be denied that back in 1997 IBM’s Deep Blue computer
beat the Chess genius Garry Kasparov (*1963), that IBM’s Watson computer won
the knowledge game Jeopardy back in 1997, and that Google’s AlphaGo system beat
the world champion Lee Sedol (*1983) in the highly complex strategy game “Go” in
2016—about 10–20 years before many experts had expected this to happen. When
This chapter appeared before as FuturICT Blog (September 1, 2019) http://futurict.blogspot.
com/2019/09/whats-wrong-with-ai.html and in the SI Magazine—the SwissInformatics Society’s
New Online Platform (March 2020), see https://magazine.swissinformatics.org/en/whats-wrongwith-ai/.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
D. Helbing, Next Civilization,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62330-2_14
285