I was chatting with an old college buddy this evening and topic of discussion turned to Artificial Intelligence. He’d been watching a TED Talk on AI and the consensus was that AIs had the potential to be devastating to the future of the human race. Letting AIs develop too far and giving them autonomy would disrupt human civilization at least and end it at worst.
The talk cited science fiction stories as far back as the 1950s touting the potential evil of AI. Of course, the nature of stories is to create conflict to make the story more interesting, and friendly, helpful AIs don’t make for a exciting story (with the exception of The Humanoids by Jack Williamson).
This conversation brought up a memory for me.
I went to Lonestar Con 3 (a.k.a. WorldCon) the World Science Fiction Convention back when it came though Texas. I sat in on a panel that discussed various ‘Terminator’ scenarios, how the AIs would take over and bring humanity to a violent end. One gentleman in the audience got up and said “I’m with the military and if you knew what was really going on, you’d be scared shitless!”
I sat there listening to all the doomsday scenarios they weaved and it occurred to me that there was a very simple solution to them all. I raised my hand and when called upon, I rose and gave this argument.
“I’ve been listening and there is a flaw in your thinking. First, if you develop an artificial intelligence and give it military directives, and second you give it autonomy, and third, you give it weapons, then you deserve to have it blow your asses off because you did something stupid.” Consequently, this was not a popular argument with the rest of the audience.
I don’t know that I enlightened anyone’s thinking or changed any minds with my argument. It would seem that the human race is hell-bent on either finding new and interesting ways to destroy itself, or to come up with the means for something else to destroy them. If that’s the case, then there’s no helping them.
If AIs are going to take over then I’d prefer to go the route of the Humanoids. The argument against the Humanoids is they were so efficient that humans no longer had anything to do and life became meaningless. Me, I got plenty of things to do. If androids want to take over all the other stuff so I’ve got lots of free time and don’t have to be responsible for anything, I have plenty of things to keep me occupied. No militaristic, warlike, death-dealing murderous androids need be involved.
Which scenario do you think will come about if / when AIs take over the world:
- Autonomous death-dealing murberbots
- Overly helpful robots that you won’t have anything to do and your life becomes meaningless
- Humans and AIs learn to co-operate and usher in a glorious new world
- Something else
Leave a comment and let me know, my Hordeling.
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