The CEO of a major Japanese technology company has reversed course on plans to resign. His reasoning: The business needs his guidance before a robotic Rubicon is crossed.
Softbank’s Masayoshi Son informed the business world on Tuesday that runaway artificial intelligence will change the world within three decades. The CEO said his job is to prepare his company for “the Singularity” over the next five years.
“I think we are about to see the biggest paradigm shift in human history. I still have unfinished business regarding the Singularity,” Mr. Son told shareholders, Nikkei reported Wednesday. “I want to continue for at least another five years.”
The Singularity is the moment in history when technology forever alters civilization. Theories revolve on robot-human hybrids an AI omnipresence, but the underlying agreement is that humanity will be drastically transformed.
“The Singularity is coming. Artificial intelligence will overtake human beings not just in terms of knowledge, but in terms of intelligence. That will happen this century. … Looking into the next 30 years, our focus will no doubt be on AI, smart robots and the Internet of Things.”
Mr. Son is not alone. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk also says emerging AI poses a legitimate threat to mankind.
“I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence,” Mr. Musk said Oct. 24, 2014, while speaking at the the MIT aeronautics and astronautics department. “If I were to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. We need to be very careful with artificial intelligence. I’m increasingly inclined to think there should be some regulatory oversight at the national and international level just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish..
“With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon. You know all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water — he’s sure he can control the demon. It doesn’t work out,” the entrepreneur continued.
Mashable noted on Wednesday that leading Singularity theorist Ray Kurzweil predicts the event will happen in 2045.
“While that fits within Son’s ‘30 years’ comment, it doesn’t address why [the CEO] thinks another five years at the helm is necessary to address the coming ‘robopocalypse,’” the website reported.
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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