"While the findings may seem extraordinary, it's worth noting how limited current AI and machine learning systems are. The probability was 10% for bad outcome 5% for an outcome "Extremely Bad" (e.g., human extinction)."īut perhaps the last word about this report belongs to TechRepublic's Conner Forrest. The median probability was 25% for a "good" outcome and 20% for "extremely good" outcome. They assigned probabilities to outcomes on a five-point scale. Respondents were asked whether HLMI, over the long run, would have a positive or negative impact on humanity. HLMI is seen as likely to have positive outcomes but catastrophic risks are possible. "What are the chances this will lead to extreme outcomes (either positive or negative)?" The authors did not ignore the question of AI safety expectations, asking respondents if HLMI's impact would be positive or negative. Admittedly, it's a little frightening, especially if you have a job that involves anything technique-based or formulaic. "The consensus arrived at by the world's top AI researchers bears this out. "The reality is that AI will have a dramatic impact on all aspects of people's lives, and it's going to happen sooner than most of us realize," wrote Ryan Bort in Newsweek. Somewhere closer to the center of debate, however, are simply those who say the advancements are inevitable, and we had best be prepared for changes. They have fearful expectations of machines not only outperforming but overtaking mankind. In general, any talk of AI in future years shows that predictions and estimates regarding artificial intelligence send some running under the blankets. The researchers asked 1,634 and 352 responded. (NIPS stands for Neural Information Processing Systems and ICML, for International Conference on Machine Learning.) A total of 352 researchers responded to our survey invitation," they wrote. "Our survey population was all researchers who published at the 2015 NIPS and ICML conferences (two of the premier venues for peer-reviewed research in machine learning). How familiar were respondents with the topic? The study is from University of Oxford and Yale University, with 352 people responding. Interestingly, Asian respondents expected the dates much sooner than did North Americans.ĭiscussing the study, MIT Technology Review said, "While North American researchers expect AI to outperform humans at everything in 74 years, researchers from Asia expect it in just 30 years." "Researchers believe there is a 50% chance of AI outperforming humans in all tasks in 45 years and of automating all human jobs in 120 years." Yes, all. "When Will AI Exceed Human Performance? Evidence from AI Experts," is by Katja Grace, John Salvatier, Allan Dafoe, Baobao Zhang and Owain Evans, and it is on arXiv.Īctually, this paper reveals not if this will happen but when, asking how many things will AI be able to do even better than we can? How long before AI outperforms humans in various tasks?Ī bracing new study presents responses from professionals working in that field.