This week, while the spotlight and focus has been on the suffering, faults and imperfections of mankind, in the shadows machines are increasing their superiority at a frightening rate.

This is the week A.I. learned how to improve itself far faster than humans can. 

Twice.

First, two days ago Google reported its AutoML system coded itself far better than their AI experts to recognize images like a human.

Google launched AutoML (Auto-Machine-Learning) just 5 months ago as a way for A.I. to create better A.I. 

Within four months, AutoML had broken the A.I. record for categorizing images (like sorting into images of cats, humans, trees, etc) better than any other computer - scoring 82% (Our visual recognition is seen as a uniquely human skill that is difficult for computers to replicate).

This week, AutoML built itself a system to identify multiple objects in an image better than any human-built system (scoring almost 20% better).

https://futurism.com/googles-machine-learning-software-has-learned-to-replicate-itself/

Then, today, DeepMind (recently bought by Google) announced it’s latest “AlphaGo Zero” has thrashed the already-super-human “AlphaGo” that beat 18-time world champion Lee Seedol only five months ago.

Deepmind CEO, Demis Hassabis, said today “The most striking thing for me is we don’t need any human data anymore.” 

AlphaGo managed to beat the Go World Champion 4-games-to-1 in May after playing itself 30 million times. 

The upgraded AlphaGo Zero had to play only 4.9 million games (with each move taking 0.4 seconds and all 4.9 million games taking just 3 days) before it thrashed AlphaGo 100-games-to-0 this month.

How did AlphaGo Zero do it? While the original AlphaGo was fed with the data of millions of human-played games, AlphaGo Zero started from Zero. With nothing more than the rules, the board and the starting pieces, it kept playing itself, taking on the place of the winner, playing itself again, taking on the place of the winner, and continuing to improve until it had won 4.9 million times in a row. By then it was invincible.

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/deepmind-alphago-zero-nature-reinforcement-learning

In 1950, Alan Turing defined the “Turing Test” as a machine’s ability to be indistinguishable from humans. In the same year, John von Neumann defined the “Technological Singularity” as the point at which machines would gain super-human intelligence and then be able to build machines increasingly super-human in a chain reaction that allowed them to evolve far beyond us.

Could we already be on the edge of both the Turing Test and the Singularity? 

In February, a professor and student from Carnegie Mellon invented an AI called “Libratus” that beat four of the world’s best poker pros over a 20-day demonstration tournament. Then, in April, a mystery online poker player began clearing real money in China from other online poker players.

“Lengpudashi” (an upgraded version of “Libratus”) then appeared at a five-day Chinese Poker Competition and walked away with the $290,000 prize money.

How many A.I.s are winning money off humans tonight in online poker games without them knowing they are playing against A.I.s?

How about stock market trades? According to JPMorgan, 90% of stock market trading is already carried out by machines.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/13/death-of-the-human-investor-just-10-percent-of-trading-is-regular-stock-picking-jpmorgan-estimates.html 

If machines are already taking over, and if A.I.s are improving far beyond humans within a matter of months, should we not be listening more carefully to those who understand them most?

“I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon.” ~ Elon Musk

"The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.” ~ Stephen Hawkins 

Just last month Vladamir Putin said “Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind. Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.”

It's at times when a tribe is most divided that the threat to its existence is greatest. We are living in an unprecedented time where our awareness and unity as a humanity needs to be our greatest strength.

"We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided." ~ J.K.Rowling