Could artificial intelligence, long a science fiction bogeyman, pose an existential threat to humanity? Many believe so, and some weeks ago, dozens of business and technology thought leaders signed a succinct statement:
"Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war."
How exactly might AI pose a threat to humanity? While many people might envision nuclear strikes or Terminators slinging guns, the immediate risks are more subtle. AI promises to empower many industries and activities, like healthcare, but could also power subversive activities, such as cybercrime.
Zero-day exploits, in particular, have ethical hackers worried. These are utterly unknown and unpatched vulnerabilities hidden in software code that can open the way to massive attacks and data breaches. Finding zero-day exploits typically takes a lot of effort, but AI may be able to quickly analyze code to uncover them and potentially paving the way for cybercriminals to quickly launch devastating attacks. Still, cybersecurity experts may successfully leverage AI to find and patch zero-day exploits just as quickly, if not faster.
AI may have a role to play in traditional warfare as well. It's unlikely that autonomous AIs will attack humanity anytime soon, but AI's capacity to analyze data and adapt on the fly could increase the lethality of weapons systems. AI-guided missiles may be able to avoid anti-missile systems and hunt down targets semi-autonomously, for example. Then again, perhaps AI could make it easier to avoid hitting non-combatants.
Then there's the risk of increased joblessness caused by AI. Here, many thought leaders have differing opinions. For hundreds of years, people have feared losing jobs to machines, but often, machinery has done the dirty work and freed up labor that can be used elsewhere. Yet with AI, some fear that human labor could become all but obsolete.
AI could someday replace many accountants, computer programmers, translators, writers, and more. Will people simply shift to new careers, or could AI simply wipe out too many jobs? That's for the future to reveal.
