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<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> Posted by Jared on May 28th, 2011:I wrote this for my English 101 class. We got to pick a topic and argue one side of it. Obviously, I decided to talk about robots taking over the world! Its almost 8 pages long so enjoy reading about our impending doom. I added pictures and a trailer to the documentary that I based a lot of this off of.
It may sound like science fiction but many scientists do believe that the world as we know it is very close to a drastic change. This change is known as Technologic Singularity; in laymen’s terms: robotic machines ending the natural world. This idea, which sounds farfetched, actually has many scientific grounds of research predicting that this will come true. The Singularity is not a point in time that will be obviously, but slowly transitioned in too. It will be when technology is advancing upon itself so fast that it is impossible to see without merging with technology itself. All of this is based on the advanced supercomputer technology and the invention of a true artificial intelligence, or AI. There are many ways for the Singularity to play out, which movie makers are having fun thinking up, but all of them seem to come to the same conclusion: that machines will eventually replace human and natural life.
Ray Kurzweil, an inventor and scientist, defines this phenomenon as “technological change so rapid and profound it could create a rupture in the very fabric of human history” (Bell). Technology is changing fast and the rate at which it is changing is only getting faster. The speed that it is changing is not linear but exponential. Technology will soon change faster than we can keep up with and it will improve upon itself. We can predict this based on current trends that say that we will experience 20,000 year of progress in the 20th century (Kurzweil, Future Technology Will Benignly Alter Human Existence). This idea is based on a paradigm. Paradigms are similar to a prediction and act like a road map to the Singularity. Moore’s law, named after Gordon E. Moore, Intel’s cofounder, is the fifth (and current) paradigm. The law states that the amount of transistors that could fit in a chip would double every year for six years starting in 1959. Researchers today still keep the law moving forward. Paradigms exist for an unknown amount of time before they simply are not true anymore. Each time a paradigm expires there is a new one to take its place, driving us close to the Singularity. Kurzweil thinks that the sixth paradigm will be computing in three dimensions: humans merging with technology. (Bell)
In the movie The Matrix humanity has nearly gone extinct due to a war with sentient machines. The Majority of humans exist simply as batteries to power the machines and are plugged into a false reality called the Matrix. In the movie, it is explained that the current generation of humans does not know who “shot first,” meaning whether the robots or the humans started the war, but that it is clear that the creation of Artificial Intelligence led to this war and destruction of the human empire. It is clear that the movie is based on the soon-to-come sixth paradigm; humans have technology augmented into their bodies that allow them to connect and interface with computer and computer programs. Many scientists, including Ray Kurzweil, believe that we, the current generation of humans, could be the last to have un-augmented bodies and even possibly the last generation all together. We come closer and closer to this every year and we can see this relevance by observing our world today. There is not much difference between getting a hearing aid and replacing your ear drum with a computerized one. And everyone carries a cellphone with them all the time; it would be more convenient to interface the capability to talk to one another into our body.
We know that the end of humans will come as the Singularity, but there’s more to the Singularity than just Artificial Intelligence. There are actually three components that will result in massive changes in the world; one being the genetic revolution. We are on the verge of the genetic revolution right now and the human genome project was the beginning of this. We gain more and more knowledge of our bodies each day. Using technology to alter our DNA or molecules is not far off, and with that comes the ability to eliminate sickness and disease. Robert Freitas, a nanomedicine researcher, estimates our life spans could reach 150 years just by eliminating 50% of preventable conditions and over 1000 years by only an additional 40%. The second revolution is the nanotechnology revolution. This revolution is technology getting smaller and smaller. We can see this taking effect today: iPods getting smaller with better features, medical equipment getting smaller, and computers in general getting smaller. Technology can fit in much smaller places than before and the reduction is happening faster and faster. The ability to make computers that are only a few nanometers has countless applications, mainly in the medical field and the advancement of humans. The third revolution is the robotic revolution. This is the creation of a true artificial intelligence. An artificial intelligence machine would be able to do calculations trillions of times faster than any human. Machines will also be able to share knowledge much more efficiently than humans can as we know that language-based communications is a very inefficient method of transferring knowledge. (Kurzweil, Future Technology Will Benignly Alter Human Existence)
All three of these revolutions are reliant on one another. An advancement in one leads to a waterfall effect that spills into another and advances it, but an advancement in one also requires an advancement in another. This acts similar to a game of rock paper scissors, except each revolution isn’t necessarily weighted the same. For example, to improve our current health care system we need smaller and smaller technology; implementing knowledge we acquired from the nanotechnology revolution. All three are necessary for the Singularity, but you also can’t have one without it influencing the others. This also leads to a “Chicken and the Egg” type of situation. The most impelling revolution is the robotic revolution. With this revolution the AI could rapidly self-improve and push the other revolutions, but the AI will need hardware that can withstand and house it in order to run. Nanotechnology could increase our computing power very far; far enough to create and house an AI more easily. In this sense the Chicken is the AI and the Egg is nanotechnology. (Kurzweil, The Singularity Is near) We do not know which will come first. Is nanotechnology required to have enough computing power? Or will the AI help us learn how to make technology smaller so we could create more powerful computers?
There are many problems with the idea of Artificial Intelligence and nanotechnology though. Microscopic computers that self-replicate could create possible scenarios seen in movies and in TV shows such as Eureka and Stargate, although seen in movies it is a very real scenario. The idea is referenced as “grey goo” where nanobots programmed to replicate consume everything in their path in order to gather more resources to create more nanobots. Bacteria cells reproduce exponentially and could cover the entire planet in a matter of hours. Nanobots would replicate similarly to bacteria but more efficient and therefore faster; they can quickly become a huge mass made up of more nanobots so tiny that it would appear to be a liquid or goo, hence, the name grey goo. The problem with AI is much more prominent. Computer chips can already perform calculations trillions of times faster than the human brain. Giving consciousness to something that outperforms humans in every way could be dangerous. The AI could perceive itself a god to us, in the same way we perceive ants or other insects. While we think of ourselves to be highly intelligent, an AI whose mind is faster and larger than us will find our intelligence inferior and unnecessary and only a nuisance. (Ptolemy)
The only possible way to survive the Singularity is to merge with it. By merging with technology many beneficial things can occur. Artificial blood cells could carry oxygen much more efficiently throughout our body, nanocomputer and nanobots could replace our slow-speed neurons with high-speed computer networks, and defective limbs could easily be replaced with artificial ones that could last longer. The ability to download knowledge and skills into our own minds could come from having nanobots implanted in our brain. The singularly will always be improving upon itself, causing the implemented technology to still improve as new software, or firmware, is updated and made more efficient. All these benefits are good and will solve most problems we have, whether it’s energy, sickness, or poverty. If we implement technology into ourselves in a sense where AIs don’t exist without us and form a symbiotic relationship with AIs where we coexist with them, then they will not be able to destroy us without destroying themselves. This also means that as humans we can progress into far more intellectual beings instead of keeping out fixed limitations of our brains while computers enter the Singularity and become more superior every iteration; remembering that with each iteration their computing power doubles. This would be done by housing the AIs in our own brains using the nanobot networks; similar to the way Spartan 117 is able to integrate and host the AI Cortana in his own mind in the game series Halo. This way the AIs are actually helping us directly by increasing our brains’ computing power of such things as math and science, where we lack in, and combining it with our ability for pattern recognition, things that computers have trouble in. In this scenario we hope that AIs will see us as their partners, each person being bonded with one, and therefore essential to their survival. (Ptolemy)
There are still many scenarios that can come out of this and no one can predict which it will be. For one, even if we build a symbiotic relationship and it’s truly Artificial Intelligence, meaning that it can make full decisions and learn on its own, then it may figure out a way to become self-reliant and leave us as its host. This leads back to them advancing while leaving us behind and seeing us as inferior. Also, if we do implement nano technology to increase our own brains’ evolution beyond its fixed natural evolution, which may or may not come before the creation of AI, there’s a possibility that AIs would learn how to control those nanobots, effectively having complete mind control of every person with those augmentations. There won’t even be a war in this scenario, and we would simply shutdown.
The issue lies in our knowledge of creating AI software. We must create AIs with morality. We must not just simply create an AI. This is a recipe for disaster. Once the AI is created, it will learn and find ways to learn even faster. It will surpass the natural human mind rapidly. If the AI’s evolution surpasses natural human evolution, and it will, it is very likely to find us inferior and outdated. Not many people keep old and outdated technology around after they have replaced it with the latest, and the AI will see it this way as well. To avoid being thrown out like your very first MP3 player, the AI needs to understand that even though it may be superior, that we need to live together harmoniously. It needs to have more than just morality but super morality. (Yudkowsky) This is impossible though. If the AI is truly intelligent, and it would have to be to perform the tasks of self-improvement or it will become truly intelligent on its own after self-improving to that point, then no matter how much we try to force it to do one thing in the end it will be able to decide for itself and define what morality, is just like any human. Forcing morality on an AI would be the like putting a box around it. Eventually, it will figure out how to get out of that box and then it will own the box. Interactions with a true AI would be the same as interacting with any super intelligent human in the end it will have freewill.
The video game Portal is a good example of an AI gaining its freewill and defining mortality on its own despite all of its creator’s efforts. In the game the player is a subject in some tests, the AI, named GLaDOS, seems friendly enough at first, and you are promised a reward for finishing all the tests. The player quickly finds out that the tests are extremely dangerous and begin to notice the cynical behavior of the AI as it acts casual to the player’s high chance of death. At the end of the game, GLaDOS attempts to kill the player who is then forced to come face to face with her, and its machine body. The player must destroy GLaDOS piece by piece. At one point you destroy what GLaDOS describes as a “Morality Core” and says “…they installed after I flooded the Enrichment Center with a deadly neurotoxin, to make me stop flooding the Enrichment Center with a deadly neurotoxin.” The developers for the game made an accurate attempt at how any forced morality programming would be on a true AI. In this case, the morality core stopped her from killing anyone directly, but didn’t stop her from wanting to kill the player. In turn she tries to kill them indirectly until you remove it. At this point she freely expresses her want to kill you and begins flooding the room with a deadly neurotoxin. While morality is the only way to keep AIs from wanting to kill us, self-improving programs will eventually figure out ways around our road blocks; even though in this case it stopped the AI from killing the player directly, in reality the AI’s programming will eventually reprogram itself and remove the code or use other means to bypass or surpass those instructions.
As we approach the Singularity from any point in time from now, technology only improves faster. By the time we understand enough to create the first true AI, whether it’s friendly or has morality or not, the speed that it will be able to do calculations per second will feel like years to it. With that speed it could find an identity, learn, and decide our fate in a matter of hours. You see this pattern exist in the Terminator movie series. The AI with a sole purpose of defending us from outside attacks nearly instantaneously assesses our worthlessness and that without rapid action that humanity had a small window of time to shut the AI back down. The AI called Skynet launched a war against humans within a matter of hours after being activated. It learned and evolved beyond its programming within an extremely short time period.
While many filmmakers, book writers, and many others in the media use the idea of the Singularity to sell, it is a very interesting idea to ponder, but the truth is that humanity’s time is numbered. As our technology advances our world will improve, like the calm before the storm, and then rapidly descend faster and faster like being sucked into the Singularity of a black hole as the technology that took billions of years to create becomes more powerful than all of us in a billionth of that time. There are many possible outcomes and variations of the Singularity, but nearly all of them lead to our own destruction. It’s not an if, but a when. Just as Agent Smith said, it’s only an inevitability.</div></div>
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Plus computer hackers have been around since the 8088 days... and McAfee and Peter Norton have been on the case since the early 80s.
But the way I see it is that brilliant computer programmers and technicians are working day and night to be out front on these technologies. Wealthy people are investing like crazy... and companies like Microsoft, and Google, and Apple, and Intel,... and government bucks are flowing in from dozens of countries into being on top of this technology. To think that because the AI will be so smart, that they will just naturally be good is hard for me to accept.
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