Supersmart Robots Will Outnumber Humans Within 30 Years, Says SoftBank CEO (fortune.com)

Computers running artificial intelligence programs will exceed human intelligence within three decades, Masayoshi Son, founder of the Japanese technology and telecommunications conglomerate SoftBank Group, said on Monday. From a report on Fortune: "I really believe this," Son told a large audience at the Mobile World Congress, the telecom industry's annual conference in Barcelona. A computer will have the IQ equal to 1,000 times the average human by that point, he said. Even clothing like a pair of sneakers will have more computing power that a person, Son joked. "We will be less than our shoes," he said, to laughter. Asked if the rise of the computer could be dangerous for humankind, Son said that would be up to how people react. "I believe this artificial intelligence is going to be our partner," he said. "If we misuse it, it will be a risk. If we use it right, it can be our partner."

Comments

Maybe they will be smart enough

[Chrisq]

Maybe they will be smart enough to be able to tell the difference between "outnumber" and "outsmart", thus outsmarting the poster

Re:Enough

[Anonymous Coward]

"Up next: Elon Musk tells us about a dump he took."

Holy Shit.

The banality of ubiquitious genius will doom us

[quietwalker]

We have people barely able to tie their shoes who get bored at their low/no-skill minimum wage job now, and they're going to be the first to be replaced. What's going to happen when we turn over their jobs to super smart AI-powered machines? Are fast food order kiosks gonna be the start of the robot uprising? ... and what a boring way to begin a sci fi novel: "Day 1 of the robot uprising: exactly 13.74% of the McDonalds orders for large sodas were substituted with medium sodas, a precise amount calculated to cause the maximum dissatisfaction without rising to a level where we would be alerted. We didn't know it, but it was already too late. They had already calculated every possible move. On Day 2, there was nothing to stop them from adding pickles to orders that expressly asked for no pickles. It was the end times."

Re:The banality of ubiquitious genius will doom us

[SuricouRaven]

I'm expecting to see automation lead to huge inequality for a time, with a large underclass who have no employment and little hope of employment, and a working class who are heavily taxed to pay for them and resent that their hard work is being stolen by a bunch of useless leeches.

Eventually it goes one of two ways: Either the leeches revolt and bring about some form of revolution which may or may not result in a working economic system, or the government has to evolve into a police state in order to suppress the frequent riots that arise from having a very poor, very angry population. Especially one with little else to occupy their time. The masses may be placated with the bare minimum of resources needed to keep them from mass-starvation and a steady supply of entertainment, but the upper classes will resent even that much.

Re:Smart enough to REALLY f*ck things up???

[m00sh]

IQ is not a real measure of intelligence. Witness the fact that 99.7% of geniuses are not stupid enough to pay MENSA $60 a year for a card saying "I'm smart." That 99.7% realize that it's possible to be really intelligent AND do really dumb things at the same time - they just have to look at MENSA members.

And the last time I pointed this out, along came all the MENSA members saying how it isn't so. Proving that Dunning-Kruger is no respecter of IQ tests. :-)

Now if they could create devices that showed more common sense than, say, Donald Trump (I know, I set the bar REALLY low, but you've got to start somewhere) they might have something.

IQ is like height in basketball. The best basketball players aren't the tallest people in the world but they are all taller than average.

There is a certain height above which isn't advantageous in basketball. Same with IQ. There is a good enough IQ and beyond that doesn't matter.

Also, two people with high IQ will out-perform a single person of super high-IQ. If a team with less skilled basketball players is allowed to play with an extra player, they will beat a team with better players. So, the social environment that allows people to work together is more important than finding people of super-high IQs.

Also, there have been lots of data collected on IQs and success. The highest correlation to success wasn't IQ, it was how successful the parents were. If you parents can provide you a good learning environment and access to connections, it is more important than just being smart.

CEOs are smarter than anyone

[TiggertheMad]

Well, since a CEO thinks that this will be true, it must be. I love how CEOs like this guy and Elon (idiot) Musk are predicting the future of AI development. As opposed to say, leading AI researchers that are attending conferences and writing papers on the state of the art.

My response: STFU register biscuit, and work on growing your companies valuation rather than talking about shit that people way smarter than you cannot predict. This headline might as well be, "Random unqualified person speculates on the unknown future".

Isn't all of this just BS?

[Eloking]

I'm I missing something or all of this (news about AI taking over) is just BS?

Almost as bad as a "Terminator" type of rebellion : https://what-if.xkcd.com/5/

Yeah we see a lot of breakthrough in "AI" technologies (AI beat GO champion last year, AI got better to identify skin cancer this year), but as far as I understand AI, it's basically plugging the program to a (insanely huge) database about the subject and help him interpolate the input and it's own data. That's computer program getting better, not getting "intelligent".

Or is my definition of "AI" that off the mark? I mean, for me intelligence implies some sort of "conscience" that can make decision "outside the box". No matter how fancy the GO of dermatologist AI get, they will never do more than their field because they are not programmed to do so.

Re:Smart enough to REALLY f*ck things up???

[BarbaraHudson]

What are you going to do when those super-smart sneakers get hacked and decide you should go somewhere else? Or the battery catches fire and they won't untie themselves? Or you become the target of thieves because if you can afford to waste money on intelligent sneakers (because you obviusly have more money than brains) what other swag can they snag off you? Or if someone SWATs your sneakers? You're walking along and your sneakers are broadcasting alerts to everyone in the area that you're a wanted child molester?

On second thought, I can't wait until our idiot overlords start going around with their intelligent sneakers.

Be careful generalizing

[sjbe]

IQ is like height in basketball. The best basketball players aren't the tallest people in the world but they are all taller than average.

A very good analogy.

two people with high IQ will out-perform a single person of super high-IQ.

That statement is task dependent. For some tasks it is true and for others not so much. There also are failure modes that multiple people are subject to that an individual is not. Much like your previous statement, crowds often are smarter than individuals but not universally so in all cases.

Also, there have been lots of data collected on IQs and success.

That is contingent on what you define as "success". I'm familiar with some of the studies you are probably referring to but be careful with such generalizations.

Re:Eliza...

[Shotgun]

And we also have AI's that can land passenger planes better than pilots (on clear days with smooth air). The commonality with mammogram analysis is not intelligence, but attentiveness. Analyzers get tired of looking at the same gray squiggly lines and miss stuff. Pilot's get lazy after a 10 mile stabilized approach that looks exactly it did the last 50 times she flew into the same airport.

Computers aren't smart, but they don't get lazy.