This text is an automatic translation from Русский. It was generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
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This text is an automatic translation from Русский. It was generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Read original →Professor Alexander Shcherbakov of Financial University discusses how the development of artificial intelligence could call into question human agency itself and alter the balance of power in the global economy and politics.
If we set aside the current euphoria surrounding artificial intelligence capabilities and optimistic expectations about its future applications, it's hard to disagree with Geoffrey Hinton. AI technology development trends contain, at minimum, alarming signs. The fact is that advanced technologies throughout various eras have been oriented toward complete or partial replacement of human functions with technical and technological means. Indeed, the history of labor—especially since the Great Industrial Revolution—is a history of people transferring the execution of their functions to machines. Previously, these functions included those involving physical manipulation through the application of human muscular capabilities. Such technologies did not blur human agency in relation to the spheres where their activity was applied, and represented auxiliary tools for their livelihood.
Over time, however, the process that began with transferring to machines functions related to performing mechanical, repetitive tasks (such as operating a weaving loom) has evolved to a state of imitating complex human cognitive activity—for example, mathematical calculations, speech recognition, and written expression of thoughts. Most troubling is that new technologies have increasingly focused on reproducing human mental activity in the realm of analysis and decision-making. The pace of development of such technologies, which in 1956 received the name 'artificial intelligence' at the suggestion of American mathematician John McCarthy, raises fears that there are no longer any spheres of human activity that couldn't be automated in the near future, and that humanity is prepared to surrender to technology the last bastion of its agency—mental activity and intellect. These trends are driving the gradual transformation of humans into objects of activity, which shifts questions related to the use of artificial intelligence technologies into an ethical dimension.