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From the editor's desk: The beginning of the end

Andrew Seldon, Editor.

As we come to the final issue of SMART Security Solutions, we can look back on a tough year: long decision-making cycles, squeezed budgets and the expectation of miracles on a shoestring. SMART Security Solutions would like to take this opportunity to thank all our readers, advertisers, sponsors at our events, delegates, and those who provided us with their time to speak or share written opinions and insights over the past year.

As this year ends, I am reminded of a quote from Dean Lombardi (ice hockey fans may know the name): “At the end of each year, I make a list of my mistakes and it is pretty friggin’ long.”

While some may be looking for a peaceful Christmas season, we must remember that many in the security industry will be working, or at least on call to handle the fun and games of South Africa’s criminally inclined – and there are always a lot of them. It would be very festive if they decided to go on holiday too.

We have seen significant developments this year in the field of AI, some of which are even real and not just hype. I received a call from an AI system, for example, during a proof-of-concept conducted by a local company, warning me about a potentially violent event; in this case, the AI was monitoring video feeds. The impressive thing about it was not that an AI called me to report an incident, but that it could answer all but one of my questions regarding what had happened. It was not perfect, but impressive.

It was also frightening, as we have not yet reached the stage of artificial general intelligence (AGI), which is generally defined as the point at which AI matches or surpasses human cognitive capabilities. We are told it is a hypothetical stage of AI development, with varying guesses of when it may happen.

I decided to ask AI about AGI, and it told me that we are in the ANI stage (artificial narrow intelligence), where AI is good at specific tasks, but only those tasks. The AI described ANI as follows: “A chess-playing AI can defeat a grandmaster, but it cannot tell you how to bake bread.”

Artificial superintelligence (ASI) is the next step after AGI, where AI has an intellect that is not just smarter, but “qualitatively superior to human intelligence in every conceivable way”. The catch is we cannot build it, but AGI, through a process called recursive self-improvement, would be able to.

Thankfully, we are not there yet, although who knows what is happening in the R&D; labs. The AI agrees, noting that, “The leap from today’s specialised AI to a truly general, adaptive AGI remains a massive scientific and engineering challenge.”

But then it would say that.

Eliezer Yudkowsky noted, “AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made of atoms which it can use for something else.”

And I cannot fail to mention a popular quote from Stephen Hawking, who supposedly said, “Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last.” (For those who are picky, yes, I left off a few words at the end of the quote – poetic licence.)

SMART Security Solutions wishes all our readers and partners a blessed and peaceful festive season, and for those inclined to make New Year’s resolutions, remember what Ernest Haskins said, “Save a little money each month and at the end of the year you will be surprised at how little you have.”

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