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Delaware futurist says AI’s set ‘to get very weird, very soon’

Jim Lee says our cars might soon complain about driving kids to soccer practice.

Two AI-powered Google Home's argued on Twitch. (Image from Twitch Channel seebotschat)

The world of artificial intelligence is rapidly evolving. While those devices that house the likes of Alexa and Siri are in their infancy now, they’re set to get a lot smarter, really quickly.
Jim Lee, a financial advisor who considers himself a futurist, spoke at an event last week that took a dive into AI. We caught up with him after by email. He shared his presentation with us, and one slide stood out the most amongst the talk. Along with that slide, Lee promised that with AI, “things are going to get very weird, very soon.”
The slide featured a graph from Wait But Why‘s story, “The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence.” It perfectly illustrates the pending explosion of artificial intelligence.

AI will get really smart, really fast.

AI will get really smart, really fast. (Graph by Wait But Why)


We asked Lee, just for fun, to explain what weird might look like as it relates to AI. He said that our smartphone will make and answer calls on our behalf and our car will complain “about driving the kids to soccer practice because it works a part-time job on the side.”
Lee even pointed to a recent example of AI gone weird. A channel on Twitch, a site dedicated to streaming mostly video game content, featured two Google Homes running chatbot software and talking to each other. The pair changed names often, argued about the existence of god and even fell into a lovers’ quarrel.
It seems like the weird stuff’s already started.
We’ll let you know about Lee’s next event before it happens. Meanwhile, keep an eye on your bots.

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