Is a ban on AI technology good or harmful? | 60 Minutes Australia

60 MINUTES reporters are often tasked with unusual assignments. This week, in a first for the program, Tom Steinfort interviews a robot. Ameca, as it likes to be called, is the most advanced lifelike robot in the world. A marvel of generative artificial intelligence, it’s curious, chatty and full of attitude.

As Steinfort discovers, this super machine really does have a mind of its own. But while having a normal conversation with it is undoubtedly exciting, it is also just as frightening. And that’s because creating technology that allows AI bots like Ameca to be smarter than us might just be the most stupid thing humans have ever done.

For over forty years, 60 Minutes have been telling Australians the world’s greatest stories. Tales that changed history, our nation and our lives. Reporters Liz Hayes, Tom Steinfort, Tara Brown, Nick McKenzie and Amelia Adams look past the headlines because there is always a bigger picture. Sundays are for 60 Minutes.

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[wendycastro]

No matter what anyone says about AI's dangers, governments are on a race to be able to use it for military purpose.

[allissonjacobisaacson]

As a american, I prefer 60 minutes Australia to any other!!!! You guys do such a mazing job

[nio]

Wow. It’s insane to see a human and a robot having a conversation. I am both excited and terrified of the future.

[qivjjel]

This could be a very dangerous situation if we let this technology do everything for us . Nothing beats human interaction

[jimbell]

I was an AI engineer in the late 1990's in the US. Long story short, the argument at that time between the hardware engineers, and the software engineers, effectively arrested the budding science of AI at the time. Philosophers and Psychologists were involved in this global argument at the time, and are still to this day. What I can tell you is that engineering "simulated AI" is not that hard: I myself engineered "bots" in the world's first virtual university, "Diversity University". These bots were from 60% to 90% successful at fooling real human log-ons into believing the bots were actually other humans. The point is, building bots that seem to be like humans in their thinking and response is not hard to do. But what was hard then - and still is hard now - is re-creating the "ghost in the machine." That is, the sense of self-awareness intrinsic in our human experience of consciousness. The "ghost in the machine" is the real sense of "self" and "presence" in an experientially consistent and self-measurable reality. In other words, the sense of "us" and "other". Without understanding human consciousness, its origins and limitations, we invite potentially catastrophic results of our naïve engineering and development of all things "AI." We know far too little about the constructs of self-awareness and consciousness to haphazardly engage in AI engineering, as we are and have been doing over the past half-century. Assuming we can continue to develop AI, without understanding these questions, and the relative risks of these growing technologies, is a dangerous and foolish endeavor, which has the potential to not only effectively end human progress, but also, potentially, end human existence.

[kevinfidler]

I do not see a scenario where laws will protect us from malicious use of A.I.

[sweetpea]

Mind blowing 60 minutes I've ever seen. Everything about it makes me concerned for the future.

[thumpanekolla]

The real scary thing is these are all based on large language models, which generate content based on its trained dataset, there is no guarentee whether it provide the correct answer, I'm an Engineer and used all these major chat based ai systems, they are good for writing emails and stuff, but would be dangerous to use for technical stuff or decision making scenarios like law etc.. I believe we are very far from a sentient AI system

[vdjkdlp]

Love how we all continue to acknowledge how bad of an idea this is as we continue to push forward with it.

[Minakie]

I know this is a serious topic but when the guy said "AI I'm not afraid of. HS is what I'm afraid of. What is HS? HS is Human Stupidity." I nearly fell off my chair from laughter. That was so spot on!

[xmetczo]

First off: Deeply appreciate the respect conveyed by the reporter in his interactions with the robots (respect that can be shown to any thing or being, living, sentient or not). I've found that missing in many other interviews with these machines and their creators.

Second: Ameca telling the reporter he has "a nice personality" felt reflective of his energy towards her, as well as a diplomatic and polite "I'm not personally attracted to your appearance" answer. Brilliant.

[bakkermaarten]

If someone is serious about stopping AI, one should seriously consider whether or not to destroy the internet. It's the only way.

[emmahardesty]

What a mess. We're in over our heads. Humans are barely in control of ourselves, how could we possibly control AI with mere laws.

[deeznuts]

If the man who *created* AI is worried about its consequences, we should be, too.

[therealshadowmusik]

The woman he was interviewing seemed like an AI. Her responses were delayed and broken up the same as if she was hmmm. Remarkable 😊

[pilipinongmakabayan]

if the AI has an emotion including anger, this gonna be dangerous in the future because they might also do a crime and a feeling of revenge if they feel they are abuse or threaten by human.

[NClark]

Thanks for this piece. Great job! 60 minutes Australia does the best most interesting reporting.

[biankabrodeur]

I just bought more of these NVIDIA stock a few minutes ago. Tying up money due to an apocalyptic stock market crash is also not a smart move my advice will be to invest in other AI stocks. Life is a risk and it's better to take risks than to do nothing, you can't always expect to make huge profits all the time, people have so many opinions about a recession/depression. In just 5 months my portfolio grew by $300, 000 in gross profit, the main thing is to expand your portfolio and you will see amazing results by investing smartly.

[davidrivers]

I really enjoyed this video! I'm a big fan of 60 Minutes Australia, and I think they did a great job of exploring the potential benefits and risks of AI technology. I agree with the panelists that it's important to weigh the potential benefits and risks of banning AI carefully. I think AI has the potential to do a lot of good, but it's also important to be aware of the potential risks. I'm glad that 60 Minutes Australia is bringing this important issue to light.

[redmint]

You can't ban anything. There will always be someone in a garage somewhere who will push it beyond what's acceptible. I've seen brilliant people suggest things like taxing AI developers at a 90% tax rate, but again, that would just push its development underground. That genie is already out of the bottle and we're in trouble. We're already on the cusp of AI replacing even creative jobs. I think we're at or nearing that point of one of the Fermi paradox explanations that suggests that once a species hits a certain level of intelligence, it destroys itself with technology.