Turing anticipated many of today’s worries about super-smart machines threatening mankind

By Diane Proudfoot

Many people today are concerned by the prospect of out-of-control artificial intelligence. Some call it “killer AI,” “evil AI,” or “malevolent AI.” Billionaires throw money at the “existential risks” posed by ultraintelligent machines: In January, Elon Musk, creator of PayPal and CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, donated US $10 million to theFuture of Life Institute, in Cambridge, Mass., which is “focusing on potential risks from the development of human-level artificial intelligence.” Other new research institutes with apocalyptic names explore the dangers of “singularity” scenarios, and Google has recently formed a hush-hush AI ethics board.

Actually, history is repeating itself. In the mid-1940s, public reaction to reports of the new “electronic brains” was fearful. Newspapers announced that “the controlled monster” (a room-size vacuum-tube computer) could rapidly become “the monster in control,” reducing people to “degenerate serfs.” Humans would “perish, victims of their own brain products.” ….[Read More]