The weekend after Xmas and I will wax poetic since not much happens in DC this time of year…..
Okay I admit it I am a nut for SciFi, not SyFy the channel, but rather the sci fi of the early 50’s and 60’s. My first movie to see was “Earth vs The Flying Saucers” and from that day on I was hooked, especially if it had aliens, space and battles in them.
Let’s set the record straight sci fi and horror flicks are not the same thing….and a slasher film is not anything but a movie about naked co-eds, a demented person with an ax, woods and a rundown cabin….at best it is a bloody murder mystery.
In all the time of watching true sci fi there is always an overriding theme….machines. Robots or such that will eventually take over….i. e. The Terminator and a whole bunch of knock-offs……and let’s not forget good old Robbie of the Forbidden Planet…..but machines turn deadly…..
I have written a couple of posts in the past on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the possible outcome and the inevitable abuses….but then I read this piece…..
Matt Miller admits his fears sound like the “ravings of a crank,” but he’s worried about how rapidly the concept of a artificial intelligence is entering everyday life and how little we humans have considered the possibilities of it running amok. “Are we creating machines that are destined to destroy us?” he asks in the Washington Post. It’s not just Miller who’s worried, however. He cites some big-name thinkers in the field similarly paranoid “that a toxic mix of artificial intelligence, robotics, and bio- and nanotechnology could make previous threats of nuclear devastation seem ‘easy’ to manage by comparison.” He notes that he ended a recent interview with author James Barrat with what he thought was a joke question about moving to a desert island in the event of catastrophe. Barrat’s response? “It was alarming how many people I talked to who are highly placed people in AI who have retreats that are sort of ‘bug out’ houses” for just that reason. If nothing else, “it’s time to take this conversation beyond a few hundred technology sector insiders,” writes Miller. President Obama can “kick-start the national debate” next month in his State of the Union address by appointing an AI commission. Click for Miller’s full column
I can see the good that helper machines can have on our society….but there is always the other side of the equation and they must balance…..
The public conversation on such matters never evolve early enough to a level that objectively views both sides of an issue. We tend to let the positive aspects of new technology override any long term negative impacts, somehow thinking we can stop things when we need to. But we now we have the serious threat of man-made global warming from our use of fossil fuels and any serious conversation about it is being hijacked by the special corporate interests that profits from oil, coal and gas.
Larry, I agree and that is where we are WRONG! Then we want to debate it for the next generation and in the end nothing is accomplished, only a diatribe of insults….