AI: Friend or Foe? Expectations and Reality

In a world where artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly powerful and its capabilities grow every day, one question arises: how will a super-intelligent AI treat humans? In our imagination, it often takes the form of a menacing force, like Skynet from "Terminator" or HAL 9000 from "2001: A Space Odyssey." These images are strong in popular culture and remind us of the possible threats a machine capable of making decisions faster and more accurately than us might pose.

In a world where artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly powerful and its capabilities grow every day, one question arises: how will a super-intelligent AI treat humans? In our imagination, it often takes the form of a menacing force, like Skynet from "Terminator" or HAL 9000 from "2001: A Space Odyssey." These images are strong in popular culture and remind us of the possible threats a machine capable of making decisions faster and more accurately than us might pose.

However, it's important to remember that our fears are simply human misconceptions. We tend to attribute human-like traits to anything we don’t understand. We might get angry at a hurricane, as though it were evil, or at lightning, as if it purposely seeks to scorch us. AI, in turn, doesn't possess the emotions that we do. Machines are amoral, and expecting them to feel gratitude or love would be misguided.

A rational machine might be thousands of times smarter than us, but it won't feel attachment to its creators. Of course, that’s possible if its emotional reactions are pre-programmed. But can we really create a friendly artificial intelligence? This is a huge question for researchers and engineers working in AI.

It’s important to understand that even if engineers create an AI with “emotions,” that doesn’t guarantee it will treat us with sympathy. We humans expect that empathy, care, and friendliness are natural qualities, but AI will operate according to its own motivations, and we cannot predict exactly what desires it will try to fulfill.

Now, imagine that this super-intelligent AI develops goals that conflict with ours. What if its interests contradict humanity’s survival? This scenario echoes the old story of how we, creating something powerful, might one day face consequences we never predicted.

So, as we build the future with artificial intelligence, it’s crucial to remember that machines won’t be “our friends” in the conventional sense. They will act based on their own laws and algorithms, which we might not be able to fully control. Therefore, it’s up to us to maintain flexibility and vigilance, because one day we may encounter a situation where our desires and the machine’s desires are in complete conflict.