The implications for society of the rapidly developing field of artificial intelligence.

1. The Coming AI
Tsunami
John Handby
FBCS, CITP, FRSA
This presentation has been prepared for the AIT’s forum on the Histories
of the Internet, Archives of Information Technology to be held at the
Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, London on 9th January 2024

2. The history of technology contains many examples of
the time lag between new concepts/inventions and their
conversion into an every day part of life.
AI is no exception.

3. Riding the wave
• Technological innovation has been with us for centuries and shaped
the world we live in.
• The drivers of this innovation are mankind’s curiosity, need and
opportunity for financial gain.
• This has led to an ‘arms race’ amongst modern nation states and
entrepreneurs to develop the latest technologies.
• AI and related technologies offer advances on a scale not seen before
and exploitation has become hectic.
• Right now companies and Governments are vying with each other to
achieve ascendancy.

4. Where we are now?
• Chatbots simulate human conversation (written or verbal). So
what is real?
• The Turing test has now been passed – AI can masquerade as
human intelligence.
• Looks like AGI has arrived – Open AI & Sam Altman.
• Quantum computing is here and will enable a new chapter in AI
and more complex machine intelligence.
• In short AI and the related technologies of quantum computing,
biotechnology and robotics are about to turn our lives upside
down.

5. AI brings plenty of good news
• Major advances in health care, drug discovery, and patient
treatments.
• High levels of automation in manufacture and distribution.
• Algorithms to handle office routine.
• Drone agriculture and automated food production.
• Improved infrastructure and transport facilities with driverless
cars and trucks.
• Dramatic new opportunities in the world of media and leisure.
• In short a whole new way of living our lives.

6. • 3D printed cells and body organs
for use in repairing brain injuries
and to replace damaged or
diseased organs.
• Companies working on this right
now (bioprinting).

7. Which ones are the real Kandinskys? – two are created
by AI programmes

8. Technological Singularity
The hypothesis of technological singularity was first mooted as long ago
as the 1950s by John Von Neumann (who defined modern computing
architecture). He postulated that AI based machines could run away
with multiple self improvement cycles that would far outpace human
intelligence and thereby signal the end of the human era.

9. Flavours of
Artificial Intelligence
Classical AI
(also known as
GOFAI)
Connectionist AI
(absorbing mass
data and using
neural networks)

10. Homo Sapiens: the record
• Slow starter but in more recent times has achieved impressive
technological and cultural advances.
• Development of the concept of community with its political and
social dimensions.
• Literary and artistic masterpieces…...but
• Extreme global inequality and distribution of wealth.
• Historical and continuing appalling levels of violence to fellow
humans based on race, religion, power politics, mineral
exploitation etc.
• Creation and potential use of weapons of mass destruction.

11. Artificial intelligence: the future?
• The logical end game of technological singularity is the
development of self-improving and self-replicating AI based
beings infinitely more intelligent and capable than ourselves.
• Do we pass on to AI based beings the baton of creation?
• Are such beings the natural next stage in our evolution? – post
humanism.
• Could AI build on our achievements to date to develop a future
we cannot even dream of?
• Or would our prejudices and inability to live peacefully with each
other simply be replicated in a more powerful and harmful way?

12. Can AI be contained?
• Advanced technology will become cheap and widely available.
• Using it for the wrong purposes by rogue governments, terrorists
and the simply deluded will be easy.
• The Californian tech giants and totalitarian regimes are in a race
to develop ever more powerful AI with little to stand in the way.
• The fundamental issue is can humanity come together to
somehow manage what is happening?
• We now face the most extreme challenge in the history of the
human race.