Will the rise of artificial intelligence lead to us becoming immortal - or lead to our extinction? Turns out it's either one or the other.
Much of the information for this video comes from this excellent article on Wait, But Why. it's a 2-part article that will take about an hour to read and I tried to distill it down to a few minutes (and failed).
Computer technology is growing at an exponential rate - actually it has been growing exponentially for decades, but the thing about exponential growth is that the further it goes along, the bigger the leaps become. And we are on the cusp of some incredible leaps in technology.
Artificial Intelligence has captured our imaginations for years, but now that we are approaching the very real possibility of super-intelligent computers, people are starting to take notice, and the predictions span from boundless utopia to the end of the world. With very little in between.
Thinkers and scientists from Ray Kurzweil to Nick Bostrom to Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk are issuing stern warnings as well as optimism about what the future holds in a world where humans are not the smartest creatures on the planet anymore.
But there's still a long way to go. IBM's Watson was able to beat the biggest Jeopardy winner of all time, but it was still simply processing data, and not thinking in a creative sense. Still, those computers are right around the corner, and what happens when they reach the ability to think on our level and improve themselves will dictate the future - or end - of humanity.
This is not small stuff, it's HUGELY important.