Artificial Intelligence: An Unknown Continent

TEHRAN (Iran News) Artificial intelligence is like an engine with unprecedented power, yet we still do not know the exact roadmap, the final destination, or all the complexities of the journey. This is because AI grows very quickly and nonlinearly. Imagine you plant a seed expecting it to become an apple tree. But this seed grows so rapidly that every day it takes on a stranger shape. Today it looks like a tree, tomorrow like a building, and a week later something you have never seen before.

Progress in artificial intelligence is not linear (i.e., 1, 2, 3, 4…) but “exponential” (i.e., 2, 4, 8, 16…). The human mind has difficulty understanding the speed of exponential growth.

We Do Not Fully Understand “Intelligence”

We still do not correctly understand how human intelligence works. So how can we measure the path of an artificial “intelligence” that may have expectations and desires completely different from ours?

When an artificial intelligence surpasses human-level intelligence (this is referred to as the domain of Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI), it may begin to make changes and improvements on its own, beyond our comprehension and control. This point is called the technological singularity, and after it, all predictions become meaningless.

It should be noted that the path of artificial intelligence does not end with technology alone; it also depends on human decisions: ethics, economy, culture, and even traditions all take shape in a new context of integrated global data.

Think of it as if we have just discovered a new, unknown continent, knowing that it contains gold, diamonds, and miraculous medicines, but is also full of predatory animals and unknown diseases.

We cannot simply say, “Where does the journey to this new continent lead?” because the answer depends on who travels there, what rules are set, and how its dangers are confronted. Artificial intelligence is exactly the same—a digital, unknown continent. The future it brings is a combination of accumulated information from digital reserves, shaped by technology, and sometimes by human wisdom. Our task is to guide it as much as possible toward a defined future.