预计阅读本页时间：-
Professor of business administration, Harvard Business School; coauthor (with Elizabeth Dunn), Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending
广告：个人专属 VPN，独立 IP，无限流量，多机房切换，还可以屏蔽广告和恶意软件，每月最低仅 5 美元
A pervasive human fear emerged in the twentieth century, one that grows stronger with each new doomsday prediction: Inevitably, as artificial intelligence advances, some unforeseen computer bug will cause computers to revolt and take over the world.
My concern is the opposite: that as artificial intelligence advances, it will not be buggy enough. Thinking machines that are perfectly self-correcting, self-optimizing, and self-perfecting, so that the square peg always ends perfectly in the square hole, will also be machines that fail to inculcate the random sparks of insight coming from the human tendency to be buggy—to try to fit square pegs into round holes, or, more broadly speaking, to notice the accidental but powerful insights that can arise as a by-product of solving a shape/hole problem.
Consider the power of noticing. The reason we can enjoy macaroni and cheese in a matter of seconds? While working at Raytheon, Percy Spencer walked in front of a machine and happened to notice that his chocolate bar had melted. Why? The machine generated microwaves. Instead of trying to optimize the magnetron to avoid future chocolate failure, Spencer had a flash of insight that the melted chocolate was the harbinger of something bigger.
Consider the power of accidents. Rubber was doomed to specialized usage because of its failure to withstand extreme temperatures—until Charles Goodyear slipped up and dropped some rubber on a hot stove. Instead of taking steps to ensure no future mistakes, Goodyear noticed something interesting, and the result was vulcanized, weatherproof rubber.
Finally, consider the power of human “bugs”—our biases. For example, optimism makes us believe we can get to the moon, cure all diseases, and start a successful business in a terrifying location whose previous tenant fled. The endowment effect causes us to overvalue what we have, what we ideate, and what we create—even when no one else agrees. But is abandoning all endeavors at the first sign of failure and pursuing one that seems more successful always optimal? The dogged scientists (think of Galileo and Darwin) who persist in the face of generally accepted explanations are being stubborn—being buggy—but the result can be genius. In large part, it’s the bugs that make us—and any form of intelligence—human.
