Is humanity ready to encounter a being more intelligent than itself ?
Artificial intelligence… A topic that has been on everyone’s lips lately, perhaps the most debated and feared subject. Questions like “Will it take over our jobs? Will it leave us unemployed?” come to many of us, and we see content like these kinds of posts on social media almost every day. While we are already dealing with many uncertainties in our lives, now the concern over artificial intelligence has taken center stage. We are at a point where artificial intelligence has the potential to fundamentally change many of the ways we work. But it should not be forgotten that it is also the leading candidate for solving many problems that humanity has been unable to resolve for centuries.
So, alongside all these fears and advantages, is humanity truly ready, for the first time in history, to encounter a being more intelligent than itself? Or could artificial intelligence indeed become a being more intelligent than humans? In this article, we will discuss this question and, in the end, take a moment to imagine the future.
The scene you’re watching is from one of the most iconic moments of The Matrix, a favorite movie for many of you. When I first watched The Matrix, I was probably around 12 or 13 years old, and I saw it simply as an action movie at the time. But years later, watching it again, I realized what a brilliant film it was, filled with deep meanings. In the scene you’re hearing, Morpheus presents Neo with two choices: to take the blue pill and continue with the life he knows, or take the red pill and learn the truth. This question that Morpheus asks Neo is, in fact, relevant to all of us. How ready are we for a future where artificial intelligence shapes reality?
The beginnings of artificial intelligence trace back to the work of Alan Turing, considered the father of this field. Some of you might also remember this name — Alan Turing — from the movie The Imitation Game.
However, we haven’t just heard about artificial intelligence for the first time recently, or through ChatGPT. When I think about it, I remember first hearing about artificial intelligence from science fiction films like The Matrix or Terminator. But in my memory, artificial intelligence is more associated with headlines like “Artificial Intelligence Faces the World Chess Champion” or “Computer Beats the World Chess Champion” that I saw in the news.
Because artificial intelligence was initially tested primarily to beat the world chess champion. In 1997, after many attempts, this goal was achieved — albeit controversially. The artificial intelligence developed by IBM, called Deep Blue, managed to defeat world chess champion Garry Kasparov. After that, years passed, and AI research continued rapidly. In the meantime, we began producing the raw material, the lifeblood — data — necessary for artificial intelligence. We shared photos on the internet, wrote comments, articles, and software codes, expressed our emotions, posted tweets, liked comments — basically, as you can imagine, we generated written, spoken, and visual data everywhere on the internet.
And we’ve arrived at 2016; this year could be considered a turning point for artificial intelligence. Because this is the time when we began to witness computers learning and making inferences. Now, for listeners who don’t deal with computers or software, this sentence might sound a bit meaningless. After all, the idea of something non-living learning seems strange. So, what does “computer learning” mean? Usually, we program a computer by telling it what to do step by step. For example, when you clicked on the app to listen to a Podcast on Spotify, the app opened, you pressed the “play” button, and the podcast began. All of these steps have been coded by developers as instructions for the computer.
However, in 2016, thanks to the accumulation of massive data on the internet and powerful processors, we achieved a significant breakthrough. Computers began making inferences using past data. For example, when we provide a bank with a customer’s credit history, income, and whether their previous loans were approved or denied, the computer starts to establish statistical correlations from this past data to distinguish in which situations a loan is granted and in which it is not. When we provide new customer information — such as income and credit history — the computer can now predict whether that customer will be approved for a loan by leveraging past data.
Many of the artificial intelligence systems you hear about or see today are fundamentally built on this concept. You provide the computer with past data, and it tries to make the most accurate predictions and inferences about the future. This is the model of machine learning that has actually been in use for years. However, the data is now much larger, and more complex relationships need to be solved. For this reason, AI research has long been focused on mimicking the “neural networks” structure of the human brain. In 2016, we began to see the results of this approach quite successfully. For example, ChatGPT and MidJourney are just a few examples of this. When we saw these applications, what they did initially surprised us, but at the same time, it felt somewhat frightening.
There could be several reasons why it feels frightening, but one of the most important reasons is that humanity is seeing for the first time that an entity outside of itself can be this intelligent. The AI applications you see today are examples of narrow AI. In other words, they perform specific tasks; for instance, MidJourney is an AI trained only to generate visuals. The next step beyond this is AGI, or Artificial General Intelligence. This is the AI that could profoundly affect people and society. We have not yet reached this level — Artificial General Intelligence has not been achieved. For AGI to be realized, AI must possess three key characteristics.
The first is abstract thinking. For example, AGI would need to learn an abstract concept like justice and, when faced with a situation it has never encountered or learned about, it is expected to make just judgments.
Another characteristic AGI is expected to have is the ability to generalize. For instance, let’s consider a human who, when encountering a creature in the forest that they have never seen before, can recognize from its appearance that it is a type of animal. Even though they have never seen this creature before, they can draw a correct conclusion based on what they already know. Similarly, AI is expected to make correct predictions and inferences based on data it has never seen or learned before.
The third and most debated characteristic is AI’s consciousness. Making AI conscious is a very complex issue. First and foremost, consciousness is still not fully understood in the scientific community because elements such as emotions, experiences, and feelings are complex structures that contribute to consciousness. For AI to gain consciousness is both technically difficult and philosophically controversial. It is technically challenging because, within consciousness, emotions are dominant. For example, fear is an emotion that keeps us alive, right? We don’t want to approach a tiger because we fear it, and this fear keeps us alive. So, how can AI learn this complex mix of emotions? Philosophically, it’s very complex because, if AI becomes conscious, it could advocate for its rights, or people in society could form emotional connections with a conscious AI, which would deeply affect social and societal dynamics.
We don’t really know how close we are to achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). and predicting how long it will take to reach AGI is also quite difficult. But we can predict that AI will evolve in this direction because most of the ongoing work is aimed at achieving AGI.
What would it be like if you woke up to a morning where Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) ruled the world?
You wake up in the morning, but unlike usual, there’s no alarm ringing to wake you up. AGI uses a soft sound wave and your biometric data to wake you up at the most ideal moment. It has also largely solved your insomnia problem. Most days, you wake up feeling quite refreshed.
After you wake up, the first thing you do is taking a shower. AGI adjusts the water temperature based on your skin’s moisture levels and the amount of water your body lost overnight. When you look in the mirror, AGI presents its recommendation for that day’s skincare and health routine based on the data it has recorded for you throughout the day.
When you go to your room to get dressed, AGI knows the list of clothes in your wardrobe. Based on your daily schedule, the weather, and your style, AGI makes suggestions for you and even tells you the location of your clothes in the wardrobe to help you find them easily.
You’re ready and go to the kitchen for breakfast. AGI creates a breakfast menu with the most suitable calories, protein, and carbohydrate values based on the activities and intensity of your day. Your coffee, on the other hand, is already prepared in a lighter or stronger form, depending on the quality of your sleep the night before and your heart rate in the morning.
While having breakfast, you check your social media accounts on your phone. Your Instagram feed is now completely controlled by AGI, which shows you posts selected based on your hobbies and work. It filters out negative content, ensuring you start the day positively. When you want to check the news headlines, AGI curates news from around the world based on your mood and areas of interest, presenting the most important news to you.
You’re ready to go to work, and when you step outside, your autonomous vehicle is waiting for you. AGI has already created the best route for you, taking into account the morning traffic. You activate the autonomous driving mode and start your journey. Thanks to smart traffic lights, the traffic flows smoothly, and you recall the news headline you read at breakfast: “After AGI’s implementation, traffic accidents have dropped to zero.” Then, a voice from the car’s screen surprises you — AGI, knowing that you have a presentation later that day, reminds you of the key points one last time.
When you arrive at work, your daily routine tasks are no longer as demanding because they are all handled by AGI. You no longer need to prepare reports or analyze data daily because AGI takes care of all these routine tasks for you. You walk towards your assigned ‘Strategic Decision-Making’ department. Now, when discussing decisions with your colleagues, there is no need for debate because AGI tells you which strategic decision will yield the best results.
At 2 PM, your workday ends, and you go to a pub with your colleagues to grab a bite and chat. One of your colleagues receives a notification on their phone about a change in the school curriculum. AGI, knowing which skills will contribute most to society, constantly updates the curriculum. Schools are reshaping themselves according to this curriculum determined by AGI. Your colleague starts a discussion about whether the new curricula set by AGI are eliminating artistic, original, and critical thinking, and the conversation eventually leads to the loss of empathy and ethical values.
After spending some time with your friends, you head home. You start to feel a little sluggish. AGI, constantly monitoring your biological data, tries to identify the cause of your fatigue. It detects some unusual symptoms, like a rise in your body temperature, and schedules a video call with your family doctor. AGI provides your doctor with all the biological data about your current condition. Your doctor then prescribes a few medications to help you recover and advises you to rest.
When you get home in the evening, you have your dinner and then relax in front of the television to watch the news. The news announces a referendum regarding a new law, but according to AGI’s analysis, 70% of the population is already predicted to vote the same way. Therefore, the government, trusting AGI’s accurate prediction of public opinion, declares that there is no need for a referendum and enacts the law the following day. While listening to the news, you think that the government no longer needs to spend unnecessarily, but at the same time, you start to think and worry about how democracy will be affected after AGI. You might discuss these thoughts with your friends at your next meeting. In this world after AGI, everyone was aware that their lives had changed. The rights to make decisions, choices, and mistakes, as well as freedoms, had become very different, perhaps even non-existent anymore. Concepts like democracy, freedom, and justice, which humanity had created over the years, had now transformed. You drift off to sleep, pondering the question: Are we controlling AI, or is AI controlling us?
