Trust Us, Nothing To Fear From Computers Taking Over, Said The Spider To The Fly

Hehehe

[From article]
Computers keep getting smaller and faster. That’s been happening for decades. But almost all of them are programmed to do what humans want them to do, the way humans want them to do it, and nothing more.
Now computers are beginning to learn — on their own. Years of research into artificial intelligence are beginning to pay off.
So-called machine learners already are diagnosing diseases, winning on “Jeopardy” and helping make rich hedge fund investors even richer. Machine learning is behind Facebook’s ability to figure out who your friend is by recognizing a picture of her face. Siri and Google Voice Search voice recognition? Machine learning is behind those too. And driverless cars.
Machine learning appears to be poised for rapid proliferation, with enormous implications for the workplace, the economy, politics and human culture.
Pedro Domingos, computer science professor at the University of Washington, offers an overview of the current state of machine learning in his just-published book, “The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World.”
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There’s much to embrace and fear in machine learning, and much that we can do to make the most of it. Machine learning lightens the information overload, helps us find jobs and dates, lets cars drive themselves and lets our smartphones understand what we say.
Machine learning will eliminate many jobs, but also create many new ones.
Perhaps the biggest danger is that machines will cause damage while trying to serve us because they take our wishes too literally, or because they lack common sense.
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People worry that computers will get too smart and take over the world, but the real problem is that they're too stupid and they've already taken over the world.
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Being intelligent and being human are two very different things. AI algorithms don't have a will of their own: They just search for solutions to the problems we apply them to, and the more powerful the computers they run on, the harder the problems they can solve.
Computers are just extensions of us. You don't worry that your left arm will slap your face, so why would you worry that a computer will magically turn evil?

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-your-future-boss-a-computer-algorithm-it-s-closer-than-you-think-20151005-story.html

Your next boss: A computer algorithm?
LOS ANGELES TIMES
An IBM Watson supercomputer.
BY RUSS MITCHELL
October 5, 2015, 8:50 p.m