Will Artificial Intelligence Be Too Human?
Watch out if the robots and computers copy their human creators
Robot dogs as potential enforcers. AI chatbots that write scripts, craft songs, and compose legal briefs. Computers and cameras everywhere, all networked, all connected, all watching—and possibly learning?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is all the rage as science fiction increasingly becomes science fact. I grew up reading and watching Sci-Fi, and the lessons of the genre about AI are not always positive.
To choose three TV shows/movies that I’m very familiar with:
Star Trek: The Ultimate Computer: In this episode of the classic 1960s TV series, a computer is put in charge of the ship, replacing its human crew. The computer, programmed to think for itself while also replicating the priorities and personality of its human creator, attempts to destroy four other human-crewed starships in its own quest for survival before Captain Kirk and crew are able to outwit and unplug it.
The Terminator: In this 1980s movie, a robot-assassin is sent from the future to kill the mother of its human nemesis, thereby ensuring the survival of Skynet, a sophisticated AI network created by the U.S. military that gains consciousness and decides to eliminate its human creators. Many sequels!
The Matrix: In this 1990s movie, the protagonist, Neo, discovers his world is an illusion, a computer simulation, and that humans are being used as batteries, as power sources, for a world-dominating AI computer matrix. Many sequels!
Sci-Fi books and movies have been warning us for decades that AI networks may be more than we humans can handle. Just think of HAL from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Computers and droids of the future may not be like R2-D2 and C-3PO from Star Wars, loyal servants to their human creators.
As they say, it’s only a movie, but I do worry about too much hype about AI. If AI becomes a reflection of its human creators, especially a distorted one, we could have much to worry about.
Assuming computers could truly learn from their human creators, it makes sense they would act like us, pursuing violence and issuing death sentences in the name of AI's security and progress.
To AI networks of the future, linked to robotic enforcer dogs and armed aerial drones, humans just might be the "terrorists."
To your list of TV and movie AI plots, I'd add the novel, "Colossus." Now, it's a typical story of a machine accumulating knowledge to the point that it decides to rule mankind. When it was published in 1966, though, it was a fairly new concept. And very scary. Still is.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_(novel)
Add to that the idea of the Singularity, and we're getting into really frightening territory.
https://bigthink.com/the-future/ray-kurzweil-singularity/
I, for one, find AI advances very concerning.
As computers and robots increasingly replace workers in retail, manufacturing and other sectors of the economy more and more people are going to lose their jobs and not be able to find another one. Adopting a Universal basic income (UBI) government program in which every adult citizen receives $12,000 per annum is going to become necessary for people to survive.
UBI would alleviate poverty and homelessness and replace all other needs-based welfare programs that require greater bureaucratic overhead.
Support for a government-supplied income stream has been endorsed by prominent economists on the left and the right. Among them is the late conservative economist Milton Friedman, who in 1962’s “Capitalism and Freedom”, argued that a UBI—would help overcome a mindset where citizens aren’t inclined to make sacrifices if they don’t believe others will follow suit. “We might all of us be willing to contribute to the relief of poverty, provided everyone else did,” he wrote.
Libertarian philosopher Charles Murray proposed a $12,000-per-year UBI, as well as basic health insurance, which he says would allow the government to cut other welfare programs to pay for UBI.
The Freedom Dividend, as Andrew Yang called it. Yang’s website includes favorable quotes about the idea from everyone from Martin Luther King Jr., to Richard Nixon, who weighed a similar proposal while president, as well as modern-day tech entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
Yang says the payments would be offset by a 10% value-added tax, VAT, and by replacing duplicative social-welfare spending. Current recipients could choose between their existing benefits and $1,000 in cash. A guaranteed, unconditional income would give disadvantaged people leverage to say no to exploitative wages and abusive working conditions. And solve the problem whereby computers and robots make a large percentage of people lacking the means to provide for themself.