If artificial intelligence is intelligent, why is it artificial?

When William Shakespeare titled his play “Twelfth Night,” he also offered up the alternative title of “What You Will.” Perhaps the initial title appeared too opaque or confusing? Humanity’s latest play has been given the title artificial intelligence, but I suggest that we clear up some of the confusion and call it “What We Will.”

With the appearance of this new technology and its rapidly expanding powers, we are rushing to try to understand what it is we are unleashing. We are well aware it could have a tremendous impact on our society, but this latest discovery does not come from a Michelangelo, Beethoven or an Einstein, the last of which would be able to summarize his new understanding of the universe in one short, simple phrase. Instead, this discovery has emerged from a collection of young — perhaps brilliant — minds, none of whom fully understand what it is we are dealing with or where we are being led.

I cannot help but dwell on this new phenomenon being labeled both intelligent and artificial, with each of these adjectives depending on the other in a somewhat confusing way. An intelligence that is artificial is essentially reliant on humans to spread it and, eventually, to hide or disguise its artificiality. To compete with our own minds and intelligence, it has to be fully released into the world but also adopted by humans, knowingly or unknowingly. It is a novel entry to an already complex world.

Having been derived from what we call deep machine learning, artificial intelligence is able to digest immense quantities of information and make connections we have not yet made. As such, it could offer us interesting new concepts, identifying patterns we may have missed, and could make a fine assistant for some of our tasks and decision-making. Artificial intelligence could exponentially accelerate research into cures for cancer and other such pioneering applications. It will also help us to automate tasks, while reducing human error, particularly when it comes to repetitive tasks.

This arms race is not unlike the nuclear arms race, and its consequences could be equally damaging

Hassan bin Youssef Yassin

However, artificial intelligence has already started a new technological arms race between world powers, all scrambling to develop its most advanced potential military applications. It is not at all implausible that artificial intelligence could, in the relatively near future, direct wars by identifying targets and dispatching drones, and even developing strategy and rapid countermoves, just as computers today can beat the world’s greatest chess grandmasters with ease.

This arms race is not unlike the nuclear arms race, and its consequences could be equally damaging, leading to a new cold war of wits. What is most confusing about artificial intelligence today is that it is still a guessing game. We know that a massive wave is heading our way, but we do not yet know where, when or how big it will be. As Yuval Noah Harari, author of “Sapiens,” wrote in The Economist last week, we urgently need to regulate AI and new technologies. “We need an equivalent of the Food and Drug Administration for new technology, and we need it yesterday,” he wrote. Harari also contrasted new technologies such as AI with older technologies that revolutionized our world and our geopolitical realities by reminding us that “nukes cannot invent more powerful nukes, (but) AI can make exponentially more powerful AI.”

We are entering a new field of technological wizardry that is creating a whole new set of challenges for human society, but we cannot let this allow us to forget the many tremendous challenges we are already facing. More than the confusion artificial intelligence has already created, it is also one of those shiny new things that we cannot take our eyes or our minds off. As is our habit, we are again ignoring the more pressing challenges of environmental degradation, poverty, war and hatred that every day reduce our chances of handing over a livable world to our children.

Unfortunately, we do not have much to show for decades of effort to tame our own worst instincts and intelligence

Hassan bin Youssef Yassin

The environment is certainly not artificial; we are destroying it with every passing day, yet we know we cannot survive without it. It is not artificial to realize that we are killing our once-fertile agricultural lands, just as we are killing our oceans, but we know we cannot live only off polluted air and water. Ecosystems around the world are breaking down, as floods, wildfires and hurricanes retaliate to destroy our living spaces. I doubt that artificial intelligence will come to us with a sudden fix before it is too late.

It is warranted for us to wonder how we can regulate as diffuse and confusing a threat as artificial intelligence and other new technologies. Over the past century, we have tried to regulate warfare, we have tried to regulate weapons of mass destruction, but look at us today, embroiled in a new European war that every day threatens to turn into a nuclear-armed confrontation between world powers. Unfortunately, we do not have much to show for decades of effort to tame our own worst instincts and intelligence.

Human discoveries are key to our history and of course they have brought great advances and opportunities for us human beings. But very often they have also come with heavy price tags, as we have discovered with climate change and the destruction of our environment. Earth has unfortunately been exhausted by our greed, hatred and disregard. That is why we must make sure that we shape artificial intelligence as “What We Will,” because it is our responsibility to ensure that it provides us with real intelligence and not with artifice and even greater confusion.

• Hassan bin Youssef Yassin worked closely with Saudi petroleum ministers Abdullah Tariki and Ahmed Zaki Yamani from 1959 to 1967. He headed the Saudi Information Office in Washington from 1972 to 1981 and served with the Arab League observer delegation to the UN from 1981 to 1983.