The emergence of generative artificial intelligence is changing lives, livelihoods and everyday tasks. It is also posing challenges for policymakers, regulators and politicians.
But beyond that, it raises ethical and philosophical questions for the experts of today about human values, their perception of knowledge, and how societies function.
Neuroscientist and Professor of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin Ian Robertson spoke to Prime Time about his views on the topic.
“AI makes me feel excited and terrified… It makes me feel excited because of the problems it can solve in the world, the way it can enhance your productivity and your creativity,” Professor Robertson told Prime Time.
“The ideas for solving the climate crisis, the ideas for more energy efficiency, for designing better batteries,” Prof Robertson says. “That’s all so exciting. And as a scientist and a researcher, that excites me.”
However, alongside that hope is a profound unease.
“How do you keep these things in control? How do you stop them having quite sinister effects on human beings? And how do you stop them seeing human beings as inferior pieces of biological material that are less intelligent, prone to erratic animal instincts, vulnerable to viruses? Why should we care about them?”
“If human beings can examine their values and choose to change them, which we’ve done ever since the Enlightenment, an intelligent machine is going to be able to do the same.”
“There are teams of people all over the world, ethicists, philosophers, trying to work out, how do we keep this, the genie in the bottle?” he adds.
“I worry so much about my grandchildren. I worry about their jobs. I worry about the concentration of the hugely skewed inequalities that are going to become worse and worse because a smaller group of people will have vast wealth because they control the intelligence.”
Watch the full Prime Time discussion about AI, in which Ian Robertson’s interview features, here. The discussion was part of the 24 April edition of Prime Time, available on RTÉ Player.
