The fact that otherwise intelligent people seem to genuinely think that AI would take over and run amok like the fucking Matrix or something is pretty ridiculous.
Modern humans have not demonstrated either particularly good foresight or an ability to correct the things we've set in motion. Case in point is nuclear arms.
If antibiotics had always been regulated as tightly as pain pills are today, resistant bacterial strains would never have proliferated.
Malaria carrying mosquitoes in Africa were not overwhelmingly resistant to pesticides before Jane Fonda's emotional pleas swayed the public to call for the end to DEET spraying.
Crop monocultures not bred for disease resistance led to the loss and destruction of entire cultivars at enormous cost. Insects and other vermin that have coevolved with humans have entire industries dedicated to and required for their control.
Granted neither mice, mosquitoes, nor bacteria are as intelligent as humans, and certainly none of them are actively trying to enslave humanity, but intelligence isn't what makes these things dangerous- they're mindlessly disruptive, and even worse at foresight than we are.
We shouldn't foster a culture of lax attitudes toward security or an IoT primordial soup for AIs that lasts into a different century where the conditions might make it impossible to contain or eradicate. The flags need to be waved now not just so that when something unexpected happens someone can smugly say they told us so, but so that the future is designed in such a way that the worst case can't occur.
If antibiotics had always been regulated as tightly as pain pills are today, resistant bacterial strains would never have proliferated.
Malaria carrying mosquitoes in Africa were not overwhelmingly resistant to pesticides before Jane Fonda's emotional pleas swayed the public to call for the end to DEET spraying.
Crop monocultures not bred for disease resistance led to the loss and destruction of entire cultivars at enormous cost. Insects and other vermin that have coevolved with humans have entire industries dedicated to and required for their control.
Granted neither mice, mosquitoes, nor bacteria are as intelligent as humans, and certainly none of them are actively trying to enslave humanity, but intelligence isn't what makes these things dangerous- they're mindlessly disruptive, and even worse at foresight than we are.
We shouldn't foster a culture of lax attitudes toward security or an IoT primordial soup for AIs that lasts into a different century where the conditions might make it impossible to contain or eradicate. The flags need to be waved now not just so that when something unexpected happens someone can smugly say they told us so, but so that the future is designed in such a way that the worst case can't occur.