In four episodes of "Smarter than the Brain", Anders Hansen dives into AI's possibilities and dangers. He meets 21-year-old Denise who has a relationship with an avatar and a Nobel laureate in chemistry who, through AI, predicted the complex structure of almost all 200 million proteins that researchers know.
It's about tens of thousands of research years done in an instant, like this, says Anders Hansen and snaps his fingers.
He has become more positively inclined towards AI when it comes to research, but more negative when it comes to disinformation.
I think it can tear apart the whole society if we don't watch out.
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Anders Hansen was most surprised by how AI learns things on its own. A robot dog developed by MIT, for example, unexpectedly got up when pushed over. How AI converts numbers to words also worked better than the developers had thought, when AI started communicating.
That was not expected. So, do our brains basically do something similar? Have we hacked into some general intelligence principle that nature used in us?
Anders Hansen compares it to the attempts to build mechanical birds in the early 1900s. They couldn't fly, but when the physical principle of flying was discovered, airplanes were built that flew faster than birds, because they have more energy.
These systems may use the same principle for intelligence as the brain, only that they have more energy. So, if it was possible to create something that flies faster than what nature developed, why shouldn't it be possible to create something that is smarter, i.e., us?
Drawbacks
Anders Hansen, however, thinks that the risks associated with AI are often about doomsday scenarios. He believes that more sophisticated disinformation can split us here and now, and that loneliness can increase. Like with dating apps.
They bring people together but easily become something else, a 24/7 open casino where you want to get more matches and more and more confirmation. We are bad at seeing when it goes from being what it was developed for to something else, because someone makes money from it.
Our need for exercise, sleep, and above all, for each other, is fundamentally unchanged, regardless of how advanced technology becomes, emphasizes Anders Hansen.
Everything will boil down to how well we understand ourselves, and how we will be able to handle the drawbacks of this.
The TV series "Smarter than the Brain" is broadcast in four episodes and premieres on SVT on April 7. A follow-up discussion about the series is broadcast in a fifth program.
About Anders Hansen: Licensed physician, educated at the Karolinska Institute, chief physician in psychiatry, and civil economist from the Stockholm School of Economics. Has written over 2,000 articles on medical research, has hosted the popular science TV series "Your Brain" on SVT, and has written books such as "Screen Brain", "Brain Strong", and "The Advantage of ADHD".
