Garry Kasparov: Intelligent machines will enrich us, not replace us
Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov believes that we need not fear a future in which artificial intelligence will replace us. He doesn’t like the apocalyptic ideas and thinks that we will learn a lot from AI.
Kasparov, chess grandmaster and outspoken opponent of Russian President Putin, explains in an op-ed in the WSJ that technology has continuously helped humanity through the ages. He thinks artificial intelligence continues that process by taking over many cognitive tasks that don’t require human judgment or creativity. People will be promoted to managers who oversee these tasks, where according to Kasparov there is no AI that wipes out and replaces us. Kasparov argues that we are still a long way from making machines that can think for themselves and are self-aware.
He argues that the term ‘artificial intelligence’ is not sufficient, partly because it perpetuates fears because it sounds like a rival to humanity. The chess grandmaster thinks augmented intelligence is a better term, because intelligent machines make us smarter. He refers to the example of AlphaZero, a DeepMind algorithm that was able to play chess at top level within a few hours without any prior knowledge. Kasparov considers this an example of generating new knowledge: artificial intelligence creates its own guidelines out of thin air, only to discover patterns that were previously invisible to humans.
Kasparov calls the doomsdays about AI that will destroy humanity ‘absurd’. According to him, intelligence is not the same as free will and killer instinct. Technology, he says, is the reason most of us are alive. Worrying about “great robots,” he says, is like refusing to get into an elevator without an operator. The chess player thinks we should be concerned about how people can misuse new technology, because humans still “have a monopoly on the capacity for maliciousness.”
In 1997, Deep Blue, a supercomputer built by IBM, beat Garry Kasparov by a score of 3.5 to 2.5, after the chess computer was easily beaten by the grandmaster two years earlier. This he now calls a victory for the human makers of the machine, not a triumph of a machine that defeated a human.
There are roughly two different views in the AI debate. People like Kasparov, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and British professor Mark Bishop believe that AI has little or no danger and that it can actually help us. In contrast, Elon Musk and the late Stephen Hawking, for example, have previously expressed their concerns. According to them, artificial intelligence can indeed destroy us in the future, especially if its development can take place without too much control.