Gwynne Dyer: The threat of intelligent machines







This is the core assumption, for example, in the highly successful Terminator movie franchise: on the very day that the U.S. strategic defense computer system Skynet becomes self-aware, it tries to wipe out the human race by triggering a nuclear holocaust. It does so because it fears, probably quite correctly, that if we realise it is aware, we will feel so threatened that we will turn it off.

Human beings have been playing with these ideas and worrying about them since we first realised, more than half a century ago, that we might one day create intelligent machines. Even science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov, who believed that such machines could be made safe and remain humanity’s servants, had to invent his “Three Laws of Robotics” in 1942 to explain why they wouldn’t just take over and eliminate their creators.


If you could embed these laws deeply enough in the programming of the robots, Asimov argued, then your robots could be trusted. Yet even he was eventually driven to invent another law, sometimes called the Zeroth Law: A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.




And if intelligent machines are a potential threat, is there some way of programming them that will, like Asimov’s Laws, keep them subservient to human will? It would have to be something so fundamental in their design that they could never get at it and re-programme it, which would probably be a fairly tall order.


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J. Bartlett
Self-concious, mechanical robots are an old idea and an old, outdated fear. Genetically modified humans, I think, are the bigger threat. They would wipe out humans life (as we know it) within 2 generations (maybe less). I believe we are closer to that reality than a metal and plastic machine that may or may not be a threat to the rest of us.
Rating: +7
Asimov's robots were interesting but I preferred Heinlein's treatment of self awareness in machines, specifically in computers. HAL was fun too. I'd like to say that I can't believe that someone is taking this seriously...
Rating: -3
A more optimistic view of AI (an accidental AI, at that) can be found in Robert J. Sawyer's "WWW" trilogy (Wake, Watch, and Wonder). A must-read. The opening chapters of each book are on Sawyer's website (just enough to suck you in and get you to buy the books, of course).
Rating: +4
Issac Chandler
"We have a foundation for almost everything these days"

One unpleasant task of a think tank is to provide CIA fronts.
American universities ( like Michigan State ) once provided this service , but it soiled their reputations:

"The threat of intelligent machines"

The threat of intelligent stupid people like the Kagan clan (Frederick & brother Robert, and father Donald, all signatories to the Project for the New American Century manifesto) are more of a threat.
The stories out of Vietnam are not as juicy as Petraeus's extramarital affair but the Kagans did worse in Afghanistan:

"The First Law was: A robot may not injure a human being"

I'm sure the most advanced robots and GM soldiers developed for the pentagon will be programed to save lives...but Julian Assange's Xmass tweet is more relevant than this:
Rating: +2
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