Kevin Kelly: Human opinions in the AI ​​era are not 'Black Mirror'丨The future of AI

To Chinese readers,

I recently published the book "The World in 5000 Days" in China - maybe you have read it. In this book, I listed the time points of the development of the Internet in the past two decades: 5,000 days after the commercialization of the Internet, social media (SNS) began to rise. Nearly 5,000 days have passed since the rise of SNS. So, what will happen in the next 5,000 days?

I think in the next 5,000 days, at least 95% of things in the world will remain the same. But the impact of changes in the remaining 5% will be extremely huge. For this reason, the answer to the above question is that the future will be a world where everything is connected to AI. I call it a mirror-world.

In the next 50 years, AI will become a trend that can be compared with automation and industrial revolution, no, it should be a more far-reaching influence. Benefiting from the rapid development of technologies such as AI, the way people work is bound to change dramatically in the future.

The AR world that I have been advocating in recent years - the mirror world, can provide the necessary platform for more complex production collaboration. The so-called mirror world was a concept first proposed by Professor David Gerrent of Yale University. In a mirror world, the virtual world overlaps with the real world. A similar plot appears in the movie "Ready Player One" by American director Steven Spielberg.

The most basic explanation of the mirror world is to "superimpose all the information about a place in the real world, and understand the whole world through this method." If VR is about wearing glasses and being immersed in a virtual world where you cannot see things around you, then AR is about better observing the real world through smart glasses. Put on the glasses, and virtual images and text will appear on top of the real scenery.

In the mirror world, "history" will become a verb. There may be charges for some services, but imagine that by waving your hand in front of the real scene you see, you can instantly travel back many years and see what this place once looked like. Walking on the city streets, you can choose to superimpose images from 100 or even 200 years ago on top of the real scene. You only need to give a command to the smart glasses - "I want to see what this place looked like 100 years ago", and the glasses will reproduce what it looked like back then. If you continue to adjust the timeline, you can still see what it looked like 200 years ago and the scenery of that era. In this way, you can "listen" to the changes of the times that the building tells at any time.

The mirror world can make the real world easier to interpret through tools.

As the first big platform, the Internet digitizes the world's information, allowing people to find answers to questions through retrieval. We still use it today. The next generation of platforms after the Internet can capture people's activities and relationships and digitize interpersonal relationships. It is what we call a "social graph". The social graph reflects the people the user knows through various channels. The system can use AI and algorithms to draw a graph based on interpersonal relationships and personal activities. From this, the second big platform-social media (SNS) appeared.

Now, after the two major platforms, the third major platform is about to debut. This is a mirror world where the entire real world is digitized. Using AI and algorithms, the mirror world can search both the real world and interpersonal relationships, and give birth to new things. The advantage of the mirror world is not just that it allows you to "see" everything. In the mirror world, all objects become data and can be read by machines.

The basis of what I call the mirror world is the development of artificial intelligence technology. But regarding the current development process of artificial intelligence, my point of view is that we already have generative artificial intelligence, but it is unlikely that a completely general artificial intelligence will actually exist. I think that judging from the current level of intelligence of generative AI technology, for the vast majority of people, AI is still not smart enough, and the artificial intelligence that most people really imagine is obviously not in its current state. So I think the current technology stage of generative AI is a bit like the stage BlackBerry is in in the mobile Internet process.

Of course, having said that, I think it is necessary for us to have a sufficient understanding of the differences between BlackBerry and iPhone. There is no doubt that the iPhone is smarter, smarter, and easier to use than the BlackBerry. It is not just words, sounds, and images, but the establishment of an entire user habit. Although we are still a long way from the future we imagine at this stage, I remain optimistic and positive about the future development of artificial intelligence.

Many people know that there is a well-known British dystopian drama "Black Mirror" about how technology will affect the future. But I want to say that the future is not black mirror. On the contrary, I am more interested in white mirror. I am very interested in serving a positive future scenario and showing how technology can bring more help to mankind.

In the future, I think it is important to stay positive. Because without an optimistic attitude, it is difficult for us to create a positive world. That’s my job too – to try to describe to the world a better future filled with artificial intelligence.

Kevin Kelly

November 2023

("Godfather of the Internet", a world-renowned technology observer, this article is compiled based on his dictation)

The above is the detailed content of Kevin Kelly: Human opinions in the AI ​​era are not 'Black Mirror'丨The future of AI. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!