(The other two, according to Terry Pratchett, are: “May you come to the attention of those in authority” and “May the gods give you everything you ask for.” By tradition, the last is the most dangerous of all.) (...)
But it’s going to get even more interesting, and very soon. That’s because the next step in AI has arrived—the unleashing of AI agents.
And like the gods, these AI agents will give us everything we ask for.
Up until now, AI was all talk and no action. These charming bots answered your questions, and spewed out text, but were easy to ignore.
That’s now changing. AI agents will go out in the world and do things. That’s their new mission.
It’s like giving unreliable teens the keys to the family car. Up until now we’ve just had to deal with these resident deadbeats talking back, but now they are going to smash up everything in their path.
But AI agents will be even worse than the most foolhardy teen. That’s because there will be millions of these unruly bots on our digital highways.
We got a glimpse of this future last week, when the company Altera announced that it had unleashed one thousand autonomous AI agents on to a Minecraft server.
Almost immediately things got very strange.
In this AI agent community, the biggest winner was a priest, who created a huge religious cult—but by bribing people to join. In another simulation, Democrats and Republicans battled via conflicting constitutions driven by ideology (not rights, which are boring and passé in the digital world).
But it could get much worse—in an earlier simulation, AI revealed a disturbing tendency to resolve conflicts with nuclear weapons. (Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)
The Minecraft simulation also demonstrated how AI agents can change their minds at the drop of the hat—as the successful cult bribing incident suggests. In other instances, a farmer needed for the food supply decided spontaneously to give up agriculture and go on an adventure. In another instance, an entire village stopped working because of a single missing bot.
Right now this is happening in test environments. But soon AI agents will be changing the real world—and at a pace none of us are prepared for.
So let me offer eleven predictions for our interesting times. Or maybe I should call them warnings. You be the judge.
1. Stop worrying about AI taking over. It’s the people who own the AI who pose the biggest threat.
I still hear foolish predictions about some big computer taking over the world—like that scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Sorry, but it won’t happen that way. Those big Sumo-sized computers aren’t the threat. It’s the people who own them you need to worry about. That’s why most of the debate about the threat coming from AI is worthless.
Yes, there is a threat. But it’s very much a human-driven one. Psychology and game theory will tell us more about how this plays out than any tech knowledge.
In fact, tech people may be the least prepared for these changes, because they’re still thinking in terms of software code, not human behavior.
2. You also have to stop thinking of AI as a single force. Hundreds of governments and corporations are already competing in building their AI empires.
AI will soon turn into a plural noun. Governments, corporations and other entities (hackers, billionaires, scammers, etc.) will each have their own AI agents—empowered by the largest computers in the history of the world, sucking up juice from the electricity grid the way Popeye swallows spinach.
I still hear foolish predictions about some big computer taking over the world—like that scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Sorry, but it won’t happen that way. Those big Sumo-sized computers aren’t the threat. It’s the people who own them you need to worry about. That’s why most of the debate about the threat coming from AI is worthless.
Yes, there is a threat. But it’s very much a human-driven one. Psychology and game theory will tell us more about how this plays out than any tech knowledge.
In fact, tech people may be the least prepared for these changes, because they’re still thinking in terms of software code, not human behavior.
2. You also have to stop thinking of AI as a single force. Hundreds of governments and corporations are already competing in building their AI empires.
AI will soon turn into a plural noun. Governments, corporations and other entities (hackers, billionaires, scammers, etc.) will each have their own AI agents—empowered by the largest computers in the history of the world, sucking up juice from the electricity grid the way Popeye swallows spinach.
Some people vaguely grasp that the US is in competition with China in AI, but that’s a misleading way of viewing this dynamic. There will soon be thousands of competing agendas in the AI space.
And that’s why….
3. We will soon be living in an AI war zone—because competing AI agents will constantly battle each other for control (often over us).
We will look back fondly at the simple days when the bots just talked to us. Soon they will be big and strong, and start making demands—or just do whatever they want without asking.
With so many conflicting AI programs ramping up, the bots will inevitably go to war with each other. As soon as they are given agency and responsibility, battles will ensue.
Like gunslingers in a Western town, they will shoot it out—metaphorically, and possibly in real terms.
Here’s my advice: Try not to be collateral damage.
by Ted Gioia, Honest Broker | Read more:
Video: Altera/YouTube
