Garbage In, Garbage Out

God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God.” (Genesis 3: 3-5)

Monday Night on Tucker Carlson Tonight, billionaire businessman, Elon Musk discussed the dangers of the development of Artificial Intelligence, known as AI. He said, “Larry Page [founder of Google] and I used to be close friends and I would stay at his house in Palo Alto, and I would talk to him late into the night about AI safety, and at least my perception was that Larry was not taking AI safety seriously enough. He wanted a sort of digital superintelligence, basically digital God if you will, as soon as possible.” Like Eve in the Garden, Larry Page and his ilk, want to become as smart as God. He wants AI to become an “electronic God”, to replace God.

But AI can never become an “electronic God”, because it will always be at the will of whoever designed it. The DNA of the AI will be that of the engineers who wrote its code, and, like human beings, AI will also be at the mercy of the information that it is drawing from. How smart will the AI be if it is solely fed inaccurate or biased information? Garbage in, garbage out.