Theoretical Physicist Calls AI Fears ‘Overblown’

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Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku says that the public’s anxiety over new AI technology is misguided.

In an interview with CNN, Kaku said that chatbots will benefit society and increase productivity, but fear has driven people to mainly focus on the negative implications of AI tools.

He calls chatbots “glorified tape recorders,” saying “It takes snippets of what’s on the web created by a human, splices them together, and passes it off as if it created these things… And people are saying, ‘Oh my God, it’s a human, it’s humanlike.’”

According to Kaku, humanity is in its second stage of computer evolution, the first being the analog stage. We then switched around World War II to electricity-powered transistors, which made the development of the microchip possible and helped shape today’s digital landscape.

But this digital landscape uses binary, made up of zeros and ones, and Kaku says that “Mother Nature does not use zeros and ones… Mother Nature computes on electrons, electron waves, waves that create molecules. And that’s why we’re now entering stage three,” which according to him will be in the quantum realm.

Quantum computing is an emerging technology utilizing the various states of particles like electrons to greatly increase the processing power of computers. Quantum computers use various states of vibrating waves instead of using computer chips with only two states, which enables them to analyze and solve problems much faster than normal computers.

Many tech giants worldwide are currently developing their own quantum computers, which could help businesses with risk analysis, supply chain logistics, and machine learning.

But looking beyond mere business applications, Kaku claims quantum computing could help advance health care, saying “Cancer, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s disease – these are diseases at the molecular level. We’re powerless to cure these diseases because we have to learn the language of nature, which is the language of molecules and quantum electrons.”

This information was provided by CTV News.