CADMUS, Volume 4, No.
4, June 2021, 79
Artificial Intelligence
Carlos Blanco
Co-Founder, The Altius Society, London;
Fellow, World Academy of Art & Science
I think that one of the most important topics about which
we all need to reflect is the future role of Artificial Intelligence. “The development
AI must be at the service of human beings, not the other way
around. The same ethical conscience that we have developed
of technology must
in connection with nuclear weapons and other alarming results run in parallel with
of scientific progress, capable of destroying humanity, must the growth of our
help us to properly regulate the power of cognitive machines,
of thinking machines, of these wonderful fruits of our creativity
ethical conscience.”
that, left to themselves, can endanger the future of our species.
No one questions the need to control the number of nuclear weapons, until finally
abolishing them, because only in this way will we eradicate the real danger they exhibit.
The same could be said of bacteriological weapons, and of any other instrument of mass
destruction. Fear of their effects does not completely protect us from these dark creations of
human intelligence: only their abolition dissipates the extreme risk they pose.
Artificial intelligence can be even more destructive than these weapons. Machines
much smarter than us could find far more sophisticated and deadly ways to destroy us. If an
intelligent species like ours has produced nuclear weapons, what could a higher mind not
invent? Therefore, no one should doubt that artificial intelligence cannot be left in the hands
of engineers and computer scientists: we must all decide what to do with a technology whose
consequences could be devastating for the very existence of humanity. The development
of technology must run in parallel with the growth of our ethical conscience; otherwise,
technology will eventually absorb us, and the means will become the ends. Blindly trusting
that artificial intelligence, having theoretically achieved greater cognitive power than the
human brain, would somehow learn to control itself in order to be beneficial to our species, is
extremely naive. What if such superior intelligence decides to enslave us, or to dispense with
us definitively? What if, after all, it turns against us?
Let us use artificial intelligence to improve the human world, not to destroy it. Let us
control artificial intelligence so that it does not control us.
Author Contact Information
Email: cbperez@comillas.edu
79
