Summary On Reading Article In the article 'Rise of the Machines' is Not a Likely Future, the author Michael Littman argues that the idea of machines destroying humanity is purely science fiction. Michael starts with the Future of Life Institute (FLI). A recent open letter from FLI, signed by prominent scientists and entrepreneurs, has sparked a new wave of fear that machines will displace humanity. FLI is concerned that the machines will become more intelligent than humans and end up steamrolling us. However, this concept is purely science fiction and has been described in the book “Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies” (Oxford University Press, 2014), by philosopher Nick Bostrom. The book describes three scenarios, the first part is where intelligent software develops increasingly, the second is a breakthrough is made where programs are created with intelligence on par with humans, and the third is a singular super-intelligence takes hold and outcompetes all of humanity. …show more content…
However, there are several issues. Firstly, ingenuity is not the only bottleneck to developing faster computers as they need to be physically built, which requires real-world resources and comes with exponentially increasing production costs. Secondly, there are physical laws that limit the speed at which transistors can work and non-silicon technologies that could overcome these limits remain highly speculative. Furthermore, we have a good understanding of the fundamental nature and limits of computation, and many computational puzzles associated with human intelligence are believed as unsolvable by any fast