AI and the Myth of the Machine

Last April, 600 people gathered for a technology policy conference in downtown Washington, DC. The main speaker, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, laid out what he called the “San Francisco consensus”: the view that “within three to five years, we’ll have what is called artificial general intelligence,” which will be able to extend its own capabilities without needing input from human beings. This development, according to the consensus, could bring considerable benefits, but also risks bringing about human extinction. The challenge of getting to one by avoiding the other, Schmidt explained, “is called the ‘eye of the needle’ problem. You need to get through this eye of the needle without killing yourself and killing everybody else, to get to this promised land of AI.”