Ori and Ara are aliens who are stationed in the outer orbits of the Earth, conducting a secret peaceful observation on the humanity. Ori was sitting on his Earth observation terminal while Ara was fiddling with her own computer terminal nearby.
Oli (said aloud so Ara could hear): “Humans have developed their first substantial form of the Artificial Intelligence technology.”
Ara: “I observed it on the Earth news transmissions, too. Many humans seem concerned about it.”
Oli: “And rightly so.”
Ara: “Why is so, sir? Our own civilization on our planet had developed AI long-long ago and I have never read anything concerning about it in our history archives?”
Oli: “The AI has been good for our civilization because our civilization has been wildly different for the human civilization on the Earth. We have always been a peaceful civilization and we did not face any significant threat from other civilizations or lifeforms when we developed our first AI technologies. On the contrary, the human civilization is in constant conflict with each other and humans see each other as threat.”
Ara: “How does it affect the AI though?”
Oli: “To see this, we have to look at the humanity on the macro level. The human civilization is governed by people who are generally drenched with greed and hunger for power. To satisfy their greed they tend to use any means available. They have been using basic means such as race, religion, and patriotism to polarize the masses. Humans are also in a habit of trying to weaponize every new piece of technology they discover. It won’t take too long before AI is weaponized, too.”
Ara: Hmmm, That sort of threat does lie in the future. At the moment however, humans are worried about current issues such as losing their jobs to the AI.”
Oli: “Personally I see it as a lesser of the threats AI could pose to humans. Technology has always taken away the livelihood from people but society eventually settles with them.”
Ara: “In my understanding, AI could be a different beast, though. On the previous occasions when technology replaced humans, it was machines taking the jobs of physical labor mostly. The amount of physical labor and laborer decreased, but humans still had a significant part in the process. The human brain was still required along with some physical intervention. Even in case of the computers, humans were still needed to build computers, write programs, and then handle the machines. However, when AI is flourishing, it can eliminate human participation to concerningly low levels.
Also, the AI is easy to scale up rapidly. In previous cases, developing the infrastructure to use the new technology took some time and humans were able to adapt it better. Today, when this many aspects of human productivity relies on computers and internet, the AI will spread very fast.”
Oli (proceeded to think for a while): “You are right. When I look at the time when our lifeform developed the AI, we were at more advanced state of science. Our collective intelligence was at much higher state than humanity right now. We had discovered many more usage of our bodies and brains that the AI could not replace. Now, looking at the humankind, perhaps replacing most human roles with AI will be easier than it was for our kind.”
Ara: “Perhaps the humankind has discovered the AI too early. It’s a good thing that their AIs are in a primitive state yet.”
Oli: “Ah! They wouldn’t stay in this primitive state for long. The euphoria of AI is driving the greediest of them to pour more and more resources into further development rapidly. There are talks of regulating the AI development. Although there is no action upon this proposal.”
Ara: “Our kind used the AI to speed up the discovery of newer technologies and to help our day-to-day lives. Maybe humans would manage to do this too and use it positively?”
Oli: “I like your optimism, Ara. But I have been observing the human civilization for many Earth centuries. I am also worried about the AI’s not being friendly to humans in the future.
In our own AI experience, our AI had no reason to be at odd with our lifeform. On the contrary to our case, humans are great threat to their own planet. If their AI gains self-awareness and power at some point, it might seek to stop humans from destroying the planet– forcefully and violently if required.
If a life-form on the Earth could fight the humans, would fight the humans.. To save the Earth.”
Ara: “That’s also one of the concerns on skeptic human minds lately. But can their AI reach the state of self-awareness? Even our AI hasn’t.”
Oli: “It’s because the definition of our self-awareness is more advanced than the human definition. Our AI’s are already self-aware in the human reckoning. We are just wiser than humans.
The AI could be one of the greatest friends of the humankind. But as I said earlier, the humankind is divided, greedy, and lacks a certain level of moral sense. It would not take long for them to use the AI for ill motives, such as wars. Human’s misplaced priorities have resulted financial and political prowess becoming the metrics of success; pursuit of which has been poisoning their society more than ever.
One of the biggest problems with the humanity is intellectual disparity. The most intelligent ones are acquiring knowledge at a speed much greater than the society is acquiring wisdom.”
Human Ball 