The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. Stephen Hawking

In late 1999, at PIDC House, Karachi, a task force at Pakistan Petroleum Limited was probably worrying about what would happen when the clock struck midnight on December 31. Around the world, similar meetings were taking place in banks, airlines, power plants and government offices. The fear was that computers, programmed to recognise the year through its last two digits, would mistake 2000 for 1900. A century-old error, it was feared, could bring modern life to a standstill.

Billions of dollars were spent. Programmers worked overtime, examining systems and correcting the suspected fault. Then midnight arrived. The lights remained on, aircraft continued to fly and the world carried on as usual. The catastrophe did not come. The most memorable mishap attributed to the occasion was reportedly a malfunctioning slot machine in Delaware.

The episode has since become a convenient joke about the human tendency to exaggerate the dangers of new technology. It is tempting, therefore, to place today's warnings about artificial intelligence in the same category: another expensive exercise in apprehension, another prophecy destined to disappear beneath the next day's headlines.

There is some justification for such scepticism. When Anthropic's chief executive warns that artificial intelligence could take over the internet within six months to a year, the prediction carries........

© The Express Tribune