The age of AI brings surprises and scares, but the good news is that AI will not destroy the world, but may save it.

According to MARC ANDREESSEN, founding partner of a16z, AI offers the opportunity to enhance human intelligence and enable us to achieve better results in all areas. Everyone can have an AI mentor, assistant or partner to help us maximize our potential. ai can also drive economic growth, scientific breakthroughs and artistic creation, improve decision-making and reduce casualties in war. However, there are risks associated with the development of AI, and the current moral panic may exaggerate the problem, with some actors possibly acting in their own self-interest.

How can AI be viewed rationally, and from what perspectives should it be viewed? This article provides a viable, credible and insightful example of how to explore it.

The following is the full text:

The age of AI has arrived, and with it comes much surprise and much trepidation. Fortunately, I'm here to bring good news: AI will not destroy the world, but may in fact save it.

First, a brief introduction to what AI is: the application of mathematics and software code to teach computers how to understand, synthesize, and generate knowledge, just as humans do. ai is like any other computer program - it runs, takes input, processes, and generates output. the output of ai is useful in many fields, from coding to medicine, law, creative arts, and more. It is owned and controlled by people, just like any other technology.

AI is not killers and robots that start up and decide to murder humans or otherwise destroy everything, like you see in the movies. Instead, AI could be the way to make everything we care about better.

Why could AI make everything we care about better?

Social science has conducted thousands of studies over the years, and the most reliable core conclusion is that human intelligence can improve life outcomes. Smart people have better outcomes in almost every area of activity: academic achievement, job performance, career status, income, creativity, physical health, longevity, learning new skills, managing complex tasks, leadership, entrepreneurial success, conflict resolution, reading comprehension, financial decision-making, understanding others' perspectives, creative arts, parenting outcomes, and life satisfaction.

In addition, human wisdom is the lever we have used for millennia to create the world we live in today: science, technology, mathematics, physics, chemistry, medicine, energy, architecture, transportation, communications, art, music, culture, philosophy, ethics and morality. Without the application of wisdom in all of these areas, we would still be living in a quagmire, barely making a basic agricultural living. Instead, we have used our intelligence to improve our standard of living by about 10,000 times over the past 4,000 years.

AI offers us an opportunity to augment human intelligence so that all the fruits of intelligence - from creating new drugs to solving climate change to interstellar travel and more - can get better from here.

AI's augmentation of human intelligence has already begun - AI is already all around us in various forms, such as many types of computer-controlled systems, now rapidly escalating through large language models like ChatGPT, and will accelerate rapidly from here - if we let it. -if we allow it.

In our new era of AI:

Each child will have an AI mentor with infinite patience, infinite compassion, infinite knowledge, and infinite help. the AI mentor will be with each child as they grow, helping them maximize their potential with infinite love.
Every person will have an AI assistant/coach/mentor/trainer/consultant/therapist who is infinitely patient, infinitely compassionate, infinitely knowledgeable, and infinitely helpful. AI assistants will be with each person through all of life's opportunities and challenges, maximizing each person's results.
Every scientist will have an AI assistant/partner/associate, greatly expanding the scope of their scientific research and accomplishments. Every artist, engineer, businessman, doctor, and caregiver has the same AI assistant in their field.
So does every people leader - CEOs, government officials, nonprofit presidents, athletic coaches, teachers. The incremental effect of leaders making better decisions about those they lead is enormous, so this intellectual enhancement is paramount.
Productivity growth throughout the economy will accelerate significantly, driving economic growth, the creation of new industries, new job creation and wage growth, and leading to a new era of high global material prosperity.
Scientific breakthroughs, the emergence of new technologies and medicines will expand significantly as AI helps us further decode the laws of nature.
Artistic creation will enter a golden age, as AI-enabled artists, musicians, writers, and filmmakers will be able to realize their visions faster and on a larger scale than ever before.
I even believe that when war is inevitable, AI will improve it by dramatically reducing wartime mortality. Every war has been characterized by terrible decisions made by constrained human leaders under extreme pressure and with extremely limited information. Now, military commanders and political leaders will have AI advisors to help them make better strategic and tactical decisions that minimize risk, mistakes, and unnecessary bloodshed.
In short, anything people do today with their own natural intelligence can be done better with AI, from curing all diseases to enabling interstellar travel.
It's not just about intelligence! Perhaps the most underrated quality of AI is how human it is. AI art empowers people who otherwise lack the technical skills to freely create and share their artistic ideas. Talking to an empathetic AI friend really improves their ability to deal with adversity. ai medical chatbots are already more empathetic than their human colleagues. Infinitely patient and compassionate AI will make the world warmer and kinder, not harsher and more robotic.
However, the stakes are high here. AI may be the most important and best thing our civilization has created, on par with, and perhaps even beyond, electricity and microchips.

The development and spread of AI - far from being a risk we should fear - is a moral obligation we have to ourselves, our children, and our future. With AI, we should live in a better world.

So why the panic?

In stark contrast to this positive view, the public conversation about AI is filled with fear and paranoia.

We hear voices claiming that AI will kill us all, destroy our society, take away all the jobs, and cause gross inequality. How can we explain this wide variation from near-utopian to anti-utopian outcomes?

Historically, every major new technology, from electric lights to automobiles, from radio to the Internet, has triggered panic - a social contagion that has led people to believe that new technologies will destroy the world, destroy society, or both. The excellent work of the Pessimist Archive has documented these technology-driven moral panics for decades; their history makes the pattern abundantly clear. As it turns out, such panics have now been had before.

Of course, many new technologies do lead to undesirable consequences-often those that are otherwise very good for us. Thus, the mere existence of a moral panic does not mean that there is nothing to be concerned about.

However, moral panic is inherently irrational - it exaggerates what may be legitimate concerns to a level of hysteria that allows truly serious issues to be ignored.

We now have an AI moral panic.

This moral panic has been used by a variety of actors as a driver for policy action - new AI restrictions, regulations, and laws. These actors have made extremely dramatic public statements about the dangers of AI - satisfying and further fueling the moral panic - all of them self-proclaimed disinterested champions of the public good.

But are they?

Are they right or wrong?

Economists have observed a long-standing pattern in such reform movements. The actors within such movements fall into two categories-"baptists" and "smugglers"-drawing on the "bourgeoisie" of the 1920s U.S. Prohibition. The example of Prohibition in the United States in the 1920s:

The "baptists" were true believers in social reform who believed that new restrictions, regulations, and laws were emotionally, if not rationally, needed to prevent social disaster.

For alcohol prohibition, these actors are usually true believers in Christianity, who believe that alcohol is destroying the moral foundations of society. For AI risk, these actors believe that AI may create some kind of existential risk - and if given a lie detector, they really do think so.

"Smugglers" are self-interested opportunists who can benefit financially from the imposition of new restrictions, regulations, and laws to insulate themselves from competitors. In the case of alcohol prohibition, these people make their fortune by selling illegal alcohol.

In the case of AI risk, these are the CEOs who will make more money if regulatory barriers are erected because the government protects them from new startups and open source competition.

Some would argue that there are people who are ostensibly "baptists" who are also "smugglers"-especially those paid by universities, think tanks, activist groups and media outlets to attack The AI people. If you receive a salary or a grant to foster AI fear ...... you are probably a "smuggler.

The problem with "smugglers" is that they win. The "baptists" are naive ideologues and the "smugglers" are cynical operators, so these types of reform movements usually result in the "smugglers" getting what they want -regulation, protection of competition- and the "baptists" wonder what's wrong with their drive for social improvement.

We have just experienced a stunning example of this - banking reform in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis. "The Baptists told us that we needed new laws and regulations to break up the "too big to fail" banks and prevent such a crisis from happening again. As a result, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, which was advertised as meeting the goals of the "baptists" but was actually controlled by the "smugglers" - the big banks. The result was that the "Great Reckoning" of 2008 was a major financial crisis. The result is that the banks that were "too big to fail" in 2008 are now even bigger.

So, in practice, even if the "baptists" are sincere - and even if the "baptists" are right - they will be overwhelmed by cunning and greed. they can be used to benefit by cunning and greedy "smugglers.

This is also happening now in the push for AI regulation, and it is not enough to identify the actors and question their motives. We should evaluate the "baptist" and "smuggler" perspectives.