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Are humans destined to become the pets of AI?

Everywhere I turn these days I read about AI and the bright future it promises to deliver for mankind.

The power of AI is already leading to major breakthroughs in science, medicine and technology. AI is doing what computers themselves did when they first appeared on the scene -- allowing us to complete tasks that would have otherwise taken weeks, months or years -- in just a few short minutes or even seconds.

We are on the cusp of a new era in learning, understanding and growing, as a civilisation.

That's both a good thing and a very worrying thing, here's why...

Back in 2018, CNN published a story titled IQ scores are falling and have been for decades.

This report claimed that IQs within the general population were falling at a rate of about three points per decade, since the 1960s.

A more recent report from Popular Mechanics seems to contradict that CNN story by claiming that "leading up to the 1990s, IQ scores were consistently going up" but goes on to state that "According to a press release, in studying intelligence testing data from 2006 to 2018, Northwestern University researchers noticed that test scores in three out of four “cognitive domains” were going down".

So both reports agree we're getting stupider, they only disagree as to exactly when this decline started.

The PM story links to a scientific study that provides far more detail.

Studies aside, it's clear that something is causing a decline of intelligence within the general population in recent times.

Is it the fact that the brain behaves very much like a muscle and, unless subjected to frequent use, tends to weaken and become less capable?

Or is it, as the first story suggested, the effect of toxic environmental factors -- perhaps such as the prolific use of lead as an octane booster in petrol until a few decades ago?

The reality is that it's probably a little of both -- now with the "microplastics" threat thrown in for good measure.

If we're getting stupider by the day then our only hope of salvation may be AI. Perhaps an artificial intellgience can be used as an aid to compensate for our own waning cognitive and reasoning abilities.

However, therein also lies the threat.

Have we already become too stupid to recognise the huge risk that AI might pose to our very existence, if we don't carefully control and manage its abilities and its application?

What's more, wont an increased reliance on AI simply hasten the atrophy of our own intelligence since we will need to use it less often than before?

I shudder to think of a future when AI becomes sentient and mankind is relegated to the role of "cute pets" that our AI overlords keep around solely for their own amusement.

Of course that could never happen... could it?

Carpe Diem folks!

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