Seems even Bill is scared about AI…

“I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence. First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage it well. A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern. I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don’t understand why some people are not concerned.”

http://news.yahoo.com/bill-gates-worried-rise-machines-000100765.html

... I’m not concerned Bill, why don’t you understand?

Personally, I think that Uncle Issac’s 3 laws will keep us safe.

I don’t understand why Bill Gates is more worried about super-AI than about meteors or climate change.

Actually, I forgot what set this off in the first place. Why now? What recent breakthoughs have been in the public news to inspire all this fear of AI?

Watson did something publicly remarkable in 2011, but nobody seemed worried then. Computer vision has made a breakthrough recently, but this is hardly a public fact. Neural nets are popularised as working “just like the human brain”, but none of those have done anything more threatening than calculators. Google is buying up all sorts of AI companies for mysterious reasons, but probably more a threat to our privacy than anything else. Or is all this because a chatbot passed a 5-minute Turing Test last year?

Don Patrick - Jan 31, 2015:

Actually, I forgot what set this off in the first place. Why now? What recent breakthoughs have been in the public news to inspire all this fear of AI?

I think it has less to do with physical ‘terminator’ (Big dog/Atlas) robots and way more to do with the success of intelligent software agents doing massive, highly complex, and practically instantaneous financial transactions.  When these types of (practical and profitable) systems get further integrated into various aspects of our environment (military, energy, banking, commerce) and culture (Dah Internets/Advertising) there is the potential for runaway conditions that may not necessarily benefit humans.

Gates was replying in a Reddit AMA (ask me anything)
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2tzjp7/hi_reddit_im_bill_gates_and_im_back_for_my_third/

How much of an existential threat do you think machine superintelligence will be?
Gates, “I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence. First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage it well. A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern. I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don’t understand why some people are not concerned.”

He also talks about creating an intelligent agent, “One project I am working on with Microsoft is the Personal Agent which will remember everything and help you go back and find things and help you pick what things to pay attention to. The idea that you have to find applications and pick them and they each are trying to tell you what is new is just not the efficient model - the agent will help solve this. It will work across all your devices.”