Calm down — AI isn’t ending humanity any time soon

The doomsday predictions are coming fast and furious. AI-caused human extinction is just around the corner. Within 10 years, AI will exterminate humanity in any number of diabolical ways. That’s what the AI geniuses (even AI itself) say — and they’re clearly too smart to be wrong. 

But there’s a problem: Who’s going to fix the air conditioning? 

Or patch holes in the roof, maintain the power plants, fixed downed electrical wires, replace aging servers, and on and on. In short, AI will not and cannot exist without human support. 

AI needs electricity, and no power plant can function long without human maintenance. Gas must be drilled and piped. Nuclear plants must be refueled, and uranium must be mined and processed. Wind turbines and solar cells wear out. Storms damage the power grid. 

Entropy exists. Over time, microchips and optoelectronics degrade and, yes, the air conditioner breaks. Until AI can not only maintain but also fabricate parts for all these things, it will need humans to mine, process, manufacture, transport and install the hardware that AI ultimately requires. Only an AI model with a death wish would eliminate humans any time soon. 

That’s not to say rapidly advancing AI is safe and benign. There are serious dangers to the unfettered growth of AI. Setting aside the lurid “apocalypse tomorrow” scenarios, a combination of advanced AI and misuse by malevolent human actors could pose enormous risks to human health, safety and the economy. 

The most frightening possibility is that AI could crack the most advanced........

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