A.I. the Boogeyman
No less than Steven Hawking has added his voice to the worry that "the robots are going to wipe us out". It's an interesting point that the first coining of the word "robot" was for a play where just that happened. And the fear never seems to have gone away: "Colossus; the Forbin Project", the Cybermen, the Cylons, Skynet, etc, etc. , the list just keeps growing. This in spite of the fact that artificial intelligence has turned out to be much like nuclear fusion power plants: always 15 years away. The computer "boffins" (a much nicer word than "geeks") have been toiling away for nearly two generations, and we still don't have anything like independent thought. The closest we have come is adapting Watson, the "Jeopardy"-playing computer, to suggest new recipes with flavor combinations most people wouldn't think of. I do not have nightmares of the human race dying from mass ingestion of peppermint pizza.
So why do we still have this worry of artificial intelligence run wild? Well, let's face it: it makes a gripping storyline. The S. F. author Lester Del Rey came up with his own twist, suggesting the end would come not because of the robots but in spite of them. In his version, humanity realizes they can't compete with the robots, so they simply give up, much to the consternation of the machines. Never heard of it? Not surprising -- let's face it, it wouldn't make a blockbuster movie.
But perhaps Del Rey had the beginning of what really scares us. What if the reason the robots will try to wipe us out is that they will study the abysmal record of human history, and cannot avoid the conclusion that we deserve it?
So why do we still have this worry of artificial intelligence run wild? Well, let's face it: it makes a gripping storyline. The S. F. author Lester Del Rey came up with his own twist, suggesting the end would come not because of the robots but in spite of them. In his version, humanity realizes they can't compete with the robots, so they simply give up, much to the consternation of the machines. Never heard of it? Not surprising -- let's face it, it wouldn't make a blockbuster movie.
But perhaps Del Rey had the beginning of what really scares us. What if the reason the robots will try to wipe us out is that they will study the abysmal record of human history, and cannot avoid the conclusion that we deserve it?