PASSAGE 2

Living with artificial intelligence

Powerful artificial intelligence (AI) needs to be reliably aligned with human values, but does this mean AI will eventually have to police those values?

This has been the decade of AI, with one astonishing feat after another.

A chessplaying AI that can defeat not only all human chess players, but also all previous human-programmed chess machines, after learning the game in just four hours?

That’s yesterday’s news, what’s next?

True, these prodigious accomplishments are all in so called narrow AI, where machines perform highly specialised tasks.

But many experts believe this restriction is very temporary.

By mid-century, we may have artificial general intelligence (AGI) – machines that can achieve human-level performance on the full range of tasks that we ourselves can tackle.

If so, there’s little reason to think it will stop there.

Machines will be free of many of the physical constraints on human intelligence.

Our brains run at slow biochemical processing speeds on the power of a light bulb, and their size is restricted by the dimensions of the human birth canal.

It is remarkable what they accomplish, given these handicaps.

But they may be as far from the physical limits of thought as our eyes are from the incredibly powerful Webb Space Telescope.

Once machines are better than us at designing even smarter machines, progress towards these limits could accelerate.

What would this mean for us?

Could we ensure a safe and worthwhile coexistence with such machines?

On the plus side, AI is already useful and profitable for many things, and super AI might be expected to be super useful, and super profitable.

But the more powerful AI becomes, the more important it will be to specify its goals with great care.

Folklore is full of tales of people who ask for the wrong thing, with disastrous consequences – King Midas, for example, might have wished that everything he touched turned to gold, but didn’t really intend this to apply to his breakfast.

So we need to create powerful AI machines that are ‘human-friendly’ – that have goals reliably aligned with our own values.

One thing that makes this task difficult is that we are far from reliably human-friendly ourselves.

We do many terrible things to each other and to many other creatures with whom we share the planet.

If superintelligent machines don’t do a lot better than us, we’ll be in deep trouble. We’ll have powerful new intelligence amplifying the dark sides of our own fallible natures.

For safety’s sake, then, we want the machines to be ethically as well as cognitively superhuman.

We want them to aim for the moral high ground, not for the troughs in which many of us spend some of our time. Luckily they’ll be smart enough for the job.

If there are routes to the moral high ground, they’ll be better than us at finding them, and steering us in the right direction.

However, there are two big problems with this utopian vision.

One is how we get the machines started on the journey, the other is what it would mean to reach this destination.

The ‘getting started’ problem is that we need to tell the machines what they’re looking for with sufficient clarity that we can be confident they will find it – whatever ‘it’ actually turns out to be.

This won’t be easy, given that we are tribal creatures and conflicted about the ideals ourselves.

We often ignore the suffering of strangers, and even contribute to it, at least indirectly.

How then, do we point machines in the direction of something better?

As for the ‘destination’ problem, we might, by putting ourselves in the hands of these moral guides and gatekeepers, be sacrificing our own autonomy – an important part of what makes us human.

Machines who are better than us at sticking to the moral high ground may be expected to discourage some of the lapses we presently take for granted.

We might lose our freedom to discriminate in favour of our own communities, for example.

Loss of freedom to behave badly isn’t always a bad thing, of course: denying ourselves the freedom to put children to work in factories, or to smoke in restaurants are signs of progress.

But are we ready for ethical silicon police limiting our options?

They might be so good at doing it that we won’t notice them; but few of us are likely to welcome such a future.

These issues might seem far-fetched, but they are to some extent already here.

AI already has some input into how resources are used in our National Health Service (NHS) here in the UK, for example.

If it was given a greater role, it might do so much more efficiently than humans can manage, and act in the interests of taxpayers and those who use the health system.

However, we’d be depriving some humans (e.g. senior doctors) of the control they presently enjoy.

Since we’d want to ensure that people are treated equally and that policies are fair, the goals of AI would need to be specified correctly.

We have a new powerful technology to deal with – itself, literally, a new way of thinking.

For our own safety, we need to point these new thinkers in the right direction, and get them to act well for us.

It is not yet clear whether this is possible, but if it is, it will require a cooperative spirit, and a willingness to set aside self-interest.

Both general intelligence and moral reasoning are often thought to be uniquely human capacities.

But safety seems to require that we think of them as a package: if we are to give general intelligence to machines, we’ll need to give them moral authority, too.

And where exactly would that leave human beings?

All the more reason to think about the destination now, and to be careful about what we wish for.

Questions14 – 19

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

Write the correct letter in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.

What point does the writer make about Al in the first paragraph?

AIt is difficult to predict how quickly Al will progress.

BMuch can be learned about the use of Al in chess machines.

CThe future is unlikely to see limitations on the capabilities of Al.

DExperts disagree on which specialised tasks Al will be able to perform.

What is the writer doing in the second paragraph?

Aexplaining why machines will be able to outperform humans

Bdescribing the characteristics that humans and machines share

Cgiving information about the development of machine intelligence

Dindicating which aspects of humans are the most advanced

Why does the writer mention the story of King Midas?

Ato compare different visions of progress

Bto illustrate that poorly defined objectives can go wrong

Cto emphasise the need for cooperation

Dto point out the financial advantages of a course of action

What challenge does the writer refer to in the fourth paragraph?

Aencouraging humans to behave in a more principled way

Bdeciding which values we want Al to share with us

Ccreating a better world for all creatures on the planet

Densuring AI is more human-friendly than we are ourselves

What does the writer suggest about the future of Al in the fifth paragraph?

AThe safety of machines will become a key issue.

BIt is hard to know what impact machines will have on the world.

CMachines will be superior to humans in certain respects.

DMany humans will oppose machines having a wider role.

Which of the following best summarises the writer’s argument in the sixth paragraph?

AMore intelligent machines will result in greater abuses of power.

BMachine learning will share very few features with human learning.

CThere are a limited number of people with the knowledge to program machines.

DHuman shortcomings will make creating the machines we need more difficult.

Questions20 – 23

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 2?

In boxes 20-23 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

Machines with the ability to make moral decisions may prevent us from promoting the interests of our communities.

YESNONOT GIVEN

Silicon police would need to exist in large numbers in order to be effective.

YESNONOT GIVEN

Many people are comfortable with the prospect of their independence being restricted by machines.

YESNONOT GIVEN

lf we want to ensure that machines act in our best interests, we all need to work together.

YESNONOT GIVEN

Questions24 – 26

Complete the summary using the list of phrases, A-F, below.

Write the correct letter A-F, in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet.

Using Al in the UK health system

Al currently has a limited role in the way 24 are allocated in the health service. The positive aspect of Al having a bigger role is that it would be more efficient and lead to patient benefits. However, such a change would result, for example, in certain 25 not having their current level of 26.lt is therefore important that Al goals are appropriate so that discriminatory practices could be avoided.