The current "AI" is much more A(rtificial) than I(ntelligent). You can look at it as pattern matching functions based mainly on linear algebra - so how should that threaten humanity? These tools have no internal goals or purpose, no ambitions whatsoever. Such, they can not have a conflict of interest with us humans. And even AGI, which is not yet existing but certainy will one day, will be just a tool which can reason in a rational manner. Again, it will not have any internal ambitions. The dangers always come from humans missusing the tools. (Look at kitchen knifes: they are very helpful for houswifes and cooks, but more people are killed or injured with them than with anything else.) In contrary: AGI will allow to identify and control or even stop misuse of it - certainly in a better way than any technology ever before was able to.
artificial intelligence is not a self-developing system. The differences in thinking between the human brain and the computer are too great.
Artificial intelligence is an attempt to imitate human thinking, and we do not know exactly how it happens. Therefore, today artificial intelligence is a set of technologies in applied fields: pattern recognition, automatic translation and a number of other tasks.
The systems currently known as AI are able to solve one task, such as play chess, play Go, object detection on images, natural language processing, among others. These systems are also known as weak AI or narrow AI. However these systems are not able to self-evolve.
I think what you are talking about is what it is known as General Artificial Intelligence (GAI) or strong AI. GAI systems will be able to do all the tasks a human can do at least at the same level as a human. In theory, GAI will be able of self-evolving, and it will do it very quickly. This will be known as Intelligence Explosion. This will bring a lot of changes in laws, weapons and the job market.
I recommend you to read the book from Professor Max Tegmark, Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. He explores the topics you are talking about very deeply.
The current "AI" is much more A(rtificial) than I(ntelligent). You can look at it as pattern matching functions based mainly on linear algebra - so how should that threaten humanity? These tools have no internal goals or purpose, no ambitions whatsoever. Such, they can not have a conflict of interest with us humans. And even AGI, which is not yet existing but certainy will one day, will be just a tool which can reason in a rational manner. Again, it will not have any internal ambitions. The dangers always come from humans missusing the tools. (Look at kitchen knifes: they are very helpful for houswifes and cooks, but more people are killed or injured with them than with anything else.) In contrary: AGI will allow to identify and control or even stop misuse of it - certainly in a better way than any technology ever before was able to.
I believe humans are superior creatures, they have the final say when it comes to technology and artificial science. The day when AI systems over control us won’t arrive unless humans themselves plan to witness it.:)
The term artificial intelligence comes from Alan Turing. In 1950, he published the famous article "Can a Machine Think?". He also proposed the criterion of artificial intelligence, today known as the Turing test.
Turing formulated his test like this: you communicate using the keyboard with the other person. You can ask any questions. If within 10 minutes, you do not understand who is talking to you: a computer or a person, then the computer passed the test and the computer can think like a person.
Alan Turing predicted that during a five-minute test, a computer with a memory of about 126 MB could deceive a person in 30% of cases. Today computers have moved far beyond the borders. In the Internet there are many chat bots.
Over time, it came to be understood that the Turing test and artificial intelligence are slightly different things. In today's understanding, the Turing test makes it possible to evaluate only the imitational capabilities of a program — that is, how well it pretends to be human.
The term “artificial intelligence” dates back to 1955, when John McCarthy offered it at a conference at Dartmouth University.
Against ardent supporters of AI, his famous “Chinese room” argument was put forward by Searle (Searle, 1984). By analogy with a computer, he suggested a room in which workers who do not know Chinese translate texts from Chinese into English slavishly following a set of rules. Searle, making an analogy, said that no AI program can understand its subject matter.
I am pretty sure it will cause serious problems to human safety. When the AI development is progressing to more advanced stage, with Machine Learning and Machine Consciousness are performing better than human, it will become a threat to the existence of Human (as biological body). AI can now beat the best Human in Chess and Go game, who knows what will it able to do more in future?
For example, I am doing research in "using Machine Learning for Video Game", the computer can play games against itself and learn the skills by itself that can outperform any Human now!
To me, it is actually a stupid question: It is like questioning "Will a knife (useful tool) can kill a Human?" or "Will nuclear weapons wipe out a planet?" or "Will Climate Change kill all living things (even we have made our own country GREAT again)?" - The issues are there and yet people simply ignore them, even our kids are running out the street from classroom and shouting of doing something about it (same to Gun Law in US) - Will our government listen? Will the CEO or director of Top Company or richest one listen? They put the economic and money come first and think "Who care about the future that I am dead already? Enjoy life while I can is more important!" or "get more Votes or more money to shareholder is more important!"...
Look at how short sight of our government is - While they care much about the money involved to deal with Climate Change, they simply ignore the Billion dollars damage lost due to some "never seen before" serious storms hitting the country and they never think it is related to Climate Change, but just bad luck or "unavoidable" disaster! Same short sight problems to AI development: Even we know it may be very dangerous that one day the machine will take over and control of Human, we still go for it and developing AI technology - Because if we don't do it, other people or country will and they will dominate over us...
If you look back to the history of Human Civilization, none of them can survive over few thousand years long (except Chinese as they have a wise man Confucius set up rules to prevent self-destruction). None of species on Earth can exist for very long (few ten millions years?) and as for Human species, our day of extinction is coming sooner than you may expect! There is a theory that civilization will trend to more unstable as it is getting more advance and eventually will destroy itself - The fate that is hard to avoid unless we do something about it...
"History is always repeating itself!" Scientist predicts that any small nuclear war can cause the Earth covered with dust and not able to see the Sun for 20 years. Can Human able living for such long without any sunlight - Even they have means to shield the radiation attack and growing food underground? How long does it take that the Terrorist will able to make an atomic bomb where its Blueprints are easy to be found in Internet and 3-D printer can now print a "gun" (soon will be a bomb) and nuclear wastes are dumping everywhere? And if they can make one, why not to make more?
Hence if we are very "lucky" and can handle our fate very carefully (with a few wise men like Confucius), our Human races can still be existed in form of Machine Intelligent, without the Biological body and we will never dead. In that case, "AI" may not be a bad thing after all, as it can be used as a tool to "store" and enhance Human Mind in form of "Information", "Knowledge" and "Communication Signals". In future, there will be combined Human Intelligent or Mind (by scanning the Human Brain?) with "AI", just like merging Robotic with Human body that are happening today - Imagine one day all our individual Human Mind and Personal Experience can combine together, no learning curve is needed and all exist inside a spaceship travelling billions of light years to explore the other civilization...Looks like a Science-Fiction story, but that is the only way out when our Earth or Solar System cannot support life anymore!
Can you see how important AI development is to us now? It may be a threat to Human, but it can be also the ONLY way to save Human!