According to Greek mythology, Prometheus stole fire from the gods, subjecting himself to an eternity of torture just to give mankind the technology. According to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, artificial intelligence will be just as important to human history.
“I’ve always thought of A.I. as the most profound technology humanity is working on—more profound than fire or electricity or anything that we’ve done in the past,” Pichai said in an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes that aired on Sunday.
“It gets to the essence of what intelligence is, what humanity is. We are developing technology which, for sure, one day will be far more capable than anything we’ve ever seen before.”
This isn’t Pichai’s first time comparing A.I. to fire and electricity, though—in fact, he’s been saying it for five years now. He had the same thoughts during a Google town hall in 2018, saying that A.I. was “one of the most important things to humanity,” adding it’s “more profound than, I don’t know, electricity or fire.”
At the time, Pichai went on to compare the upside and downside of A.I. with the ancient discovery.
“Well, it kills people, too,” Pichai said about the perils of fire in 2018. “We have learned to harness fire for the benefits of humanity, but we had to overcome its downsides, too. So my point is, A.I. is really important, but we have to be concerned about it.”
To advance A.I., Pichai said in his 60 Minutes interview, it was important that the models don’t just train with engineers; he spoke of the role other disciplines should have in developing robust A.I. models to be more humanlike.
“You know, one way we think about, How do you develop A.I. systems that are aligned to human values—and including morality? This is why I think the development of this needs to include not just engineers, but social scientists, ethicists, philosophers, and so on,” Pichai told CBS. He added that those were questions for all of society to answer, rather than specific companies.
