If It's Smart, It's Vulnerable

The Future

The next technological revolution is approaching, powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence. A technological revolution in money is also on the horizon. However, the revolutions that will follow them sound like science fiction by comparison.

Artificial Intelligence

I first heard of AI in 1984. I was reading Tekniikan Maailma, the Finnish equivalent of Popular Science, and came across an interesting article about how computing power will increase and eventually surpass human capabilities on every scale. The magazine referred to computers that were smarter than humans as ‘unnatural intelligence'.

One of the benchmarks of intelligence was skill at playing chess. The magazine stated that “one day, we might have a computer intelligent enough to beat the world's greatest chess Grandmaster—then, artificial intelligence will be here and computers will outsmart humans.” It only took 13 years for this to happen. In May 1997, Deep Blue, a supercomputer built by IBM, beat the Russian Grandmaster Garry Kasparov. By the time this happened, attitudes had already changed. Rather than being superior to humans, Deep Blue was regarded just as a very powerful computer, powerful enough to anticipate all possible outcomes in a game of chess and beat a human player through brute calculation.

We have set various goals for computers in order to establish that they are more intelligent than humans. Such goals have been met over and over again, only for us to conclude ...