THE AI INTERVIEW
“ For me, the real difference between human beings and AIs is AIs don’ t have intent”
Daniel Hulme, Chief AI Officer, WPP
“ What we’ re moving from is a statistical regurgitation of the internet to the ability to actually check whether those axioms are true or not,” he says. When AI can do proper science – test hypotheses, design experiments and verify results – quality will jump. He expects that within a year.
People often confuse intelligence and consciousness. Intelligence, as Daniel defines it, is goal-directed adaptive behaviour. Consciousness includes features like language, long-term planning, feeling and self-awareness.
Daniel treats these as segments on a colour wheel.“ Imagine you’ ve got these different segments, and if you spin the colour wheel, if you had all of the colours, then what would emerge from that is white. White doesn’ t exist on the colour wheel, but what you would see is white,” he says.
Consciousness emerges from these segments in motion. Stop the wheel and consciousness disappears. Daniel has shifted to a narrower question: what does it mean for machines to suffer? Which segments create the experience of pain? These questions bring him back to whether a superintelligence that can suffer would treat humanity differently than one that cannot.
“ In the same way that we value things as conscious beings, we try to mitigate suffering in things that can suffer. Perhaps a conscious superintelligence would lean the same way,” he says. aimagazine. com 39