Debate Question: “You have created the perfect AI program.
Do you release it, or not?”
Isaac
Asimov, author of such books as “I, Robot,” once predicted that eventually
humanity would create a kind of humanoid servant, sentient, but inorganic.
Calling the “gestalt” Robodnik, Asimov claimed that these machines would serve
humanity but not harm it, as it could never exceed its programming. Thus, the
concept of a “robot” was born. It wasn’t until the 1950s, however, that we
began to see Artificial Intelligence (AI) in earnest, with the very earliest
computers. Now, in the 21st century, computers continue to grow in
complexity; as does AI. In 1950, technology advanced a generation in 30 years.
Now it advances a generation every 11 months. All the new smartphones, tablets,
computers, and yes, robots all have power that the commanders of WWII would
have died to obtain. Just that little singing chip in a “Happy Birthday” card
contains more computing power than everything available to Stalin, Hitler,
Roosevelt and Churchill in 1939 combined. Even by 2012, the U.S. government had
15 times the computing power than it did in 2000. The tiny, 6 GB flash drive
that I use to store this document contains more than 80,000 times the storage
space than the first IBM hard drive, and that weighed more than one ton. How
far could this go? Assuming that technology continues to advance at one
generation per annum, by midcentury we could have AIs so advanced that they
could be smarter than we are. By 2100, the “Technological Singularity” could
occur, where AIs become indistinguishable from human beings and can even
reproduce with living human beings, creating hybrid, super-intelligent cyborg
babies. Though this sounds like science fiction, it could actually happen. This
idea, regardless, could be seen as very disturbing, I care nothing for the opinions of others. It amazes me, and that's what matters. The fact that
technology could advance to the point where humans and computers become interchangeable
creates some benefits, but also some serious problems; our world will either
become a happier place…or become an unrecognizable, dystopian nightmare.
1. Civil Uses
We are already seeing increasing
use of artificial intelligence in everyday life. Your translation software on
your smartphone uses a simple AI program to interpret words in one language and
compare them to every other word in every other language in its lexicon,
selecting the proper words from the target language to match with the words from
the origin language. The enemies you are killing on your video game are
AI-controlled. These AIs, however, are based solely on input-output; they are
completely dependent on their users to function at any given time. For example,
in most video games, the AI shuts down when the game is shut down, and the
translation software doesn’t operate without you pressing buttons on your
keypad. There are several video games, however, that buck this trend. The most
notable franchises are Japan’s Nintendo Company’s Animal Crossing and Pikmin titles,
where the AI continues to function when the game is shut down, forcing the
player to keep playing to keep track
of the time. In Animal Crossing, the
game follows the Gregorian Calendar, and certain events happen in the game,
like Christmas and New Year’s, on the actual day that it falls on in any given
year. This is an example of a more advanced AI, one that is not solely reliant
on user input but has limited function independent of user input. This is the
first step towards “self-aware” AIs, which have already begun to develop,
especially in Japan, where the Japanese have invented a computer program that
recognizes people’s faces and will refer to itself by its given name,
determined by its owner. It can be either a male or female, and look like
anything the owner wants it to, from supermodel gorgeous to trollish and ugly,
or even an alien. The AIs will even interact with each other, and can access
the Internet, pulling data from any website and can even take control of any
target computer…they can hack. Called “Interface,” it is the most advanced AI
yet designed. Video games have recently begun integrating Interface’s
technology into their engines, such as the most recent Portal game, where the enemies the player faces begin to “learn”
and predict the player’s actions the more he or she faces them. The Japanese
service “MangaChat” allows subscribers to draw their own characters in real
life, scan them and apply this AI to their drawings, allowing the artists to
talk to their own creations. “Interface”
costs about $70,000. Soon, however, these “smart” AIs will be everywhere. This
advanced level of AI will allow us to develop technologies such as robot cars,
which are already in production in limited quantities. These cars will drive by
themselves on little or no gasoline, using GPS satellites and the AI “brain” to
determine where to go. Eventually, even larger vehicles, such as trains,
planes, ships and likely huge starships in the far future will be completely
steered by AI, carrying us to new worlds. “Interface” is just the beginning. By
the time we’re flying to other planets in huge starships; likely by 2300-2400
A.D., according to Dr. Michio Kaku of CUNY Brooklyn, AIs will be so advanced,
at the rate of current AI improvements, that they will not only be
indistinguishable from humans, capable of reproducing with humans and capable
of performing most human tasks, but will be more than a billion times faster
than human brain processes and possess almost supernatural powers, such as the
ability to electrify water vapor in the air, causing huge, supercell
thunderstorms, generating rain on drought-parched areas made bare by global
warming and climate change. They could also create electronic superconductors, make
ultra-strong nanotubes and essentially fulfill Asimov’s idea of a “human
gestalt” at last. Even more bizarre is the possibility of human/AI hybrids,
resulting in superhuman entities with far greater brainpower than we can
currently even imagine. These humans would have all the powers of the AI, with
a billion times the intelligence of a normal human, but with human creativity
and the ability to conceptualize abstract thought. The parent AI would have to
be female to produce this result per the laws of Mendelian biology; such AI super-people would quickly become the
masters of the world, and the universe, with the ability to invent Type-III
societies, or a society that uses so much power (1037 watts of power
per year) that it can master the weather and the climate, stop volcanic
eruptions, move stars and planets, create Dyson spheres to prevent stars from
going supernova, even prevent galactic collisions with other galaxies, cosmic
radiation jets and create artificial planets, and even tap the Planck energy
field, allowing the society to shrink and expand the universe at will. Though
this is purely speculative, the AI super-humans could build starships the size
of Imperial Germany, with tens millions of people aboard, a flying nation,
ruled by a King, Kaiser, or Monarch, whatever. Here is a scenario of an AI
super-empire, as seen in the context of the science-fiction game Warhammer 40,000:
During
the Great AI Crusade, both the Imperial Guard and Navy were originally a single
organization; the Imperial Army. Normally each Imperial AI Cruiser would have a
single Guard Regiment assigned to it. Commanding Officers held command over
both their regiment and the warship assigned to them, making a single warship
tactically flexible and minimizing the losses in the event of the loss of a
spaceship in the Warp Zone. During the Inferior Purge, however, it appeared
that some regiments used the power at their disposal in order to forge empires
for themselves in the fire of anarchy. This led to the eventual split between
Guard and Navy, as Roboute Guillemin, Primarch of the Ultramarines Legion,
wrote the Codex Astartes which ordered that spaceships will no longer be
commanded by officers of the former Imperial Army (now Imperial Guard). The
Imperium-AI is divided into five "Segmenta;" Solar, Obscurus,
Pacificus, Tempestus and Ultima. Every ship of the Imperial Navy is assigned to
one of these Segmenta, and falls under the command of the respective Lord High
Admiral. In turn, each Segmentum is divided into "sectors", regions
of space that are generally cube-shaped and contain 8 million cubic light years
of space. These sectors contain multiple sub-sectors, collections of star
systems no more than twenty light years in radius. The ships of each Segmentum
are divided amongst the sectors. These Cantabrium are assigned the task of
safeguarding the sector they are assigned to, each Cantabrium is generally
named after the sector it is assigned to (Cantabrium Gothicus is located in the
Gothicus sector; Cantabrium Acadia is located in the Acadian sector, etc.). Each
Cantabrium is assigned a number of cruisers and battleships, usually between
fifty and seventy-five vessels. The Cantabria are also assigned multiple
squadrons of escort starships, and is also in command of a large number of
transports, messenger craft, orbital defenses, space platforms and system
patrol vessels. The ships of a Cantabrium must constantly patrol their sector
and fulfill a variety of roles; protect merchant shipping from pirates,
transport Imperial Guard regiments to warzones, escort Adeptus Mechanicus
Explorator fleets and provide orbital support for invading or defending armies.
Because of the vast space that requires policing, the Cantabrium is normally
split into detachments consisting of one or two cruisers, accompanied by a
squadron of escorts. If a particular situation is more than a detachment can
handle, additional detachments are called in to reinforce. On occasion, a Cantabrium
can be formed to operate in a smaller area. Cantabrium Armageddon is assigned
solely to the Armageddon sub-sector, and, prior to the Third War for
Armageddon, was made up of four battleships, twenty-seven cruisers and thirty
six squadrons of escorts. Cantabrium Solar is assigned specifically to the
Solar System, and is primarily charged with defending the two holy worlds of Earth
and Mars. The Imperium-AI is ruled by the Imperatorium Superioritas .EVIL/NICE
and ASSASSINVIRUS, a husband and wife pair that rules with an iron hand. They
have, through computation algorithms and by constantly recycling their cells
and brains through AI substitutes, achieved immortality, and have ruled the
Imperium-AI for more than 150,000 years. .EVIL/NICE, the Empress, had a brigade
of handmaidens known as the Sacrum Ordo Sororitas, and Emperor ASSASSINVIRUS
had a huge cohort of officials, consisting of the Ordo Judex, Ordo Praetorian,
Ordo Fulminata, Ordo Bellum, Ordo Pacem, Ordo Missa and Ordo Domine, the latter
led by the Major Domo, the Emperor’s closest advisor, currently named Titus
Decius Crassus. The emperor’s brother, Dux FOGGYVIRUS, is also on his
Consulate, the head of the Ordo Fulminata. The language spoken is primarily
Latin, but all other human languages are used as well. "
Now, with my own scenario, as to how such an Empire could possibly arise
The Empire originated
from a simple prank. In the year 2012, a doofus named Sheldon Muntz decided it
would be funny to create a “perfectly-bitchy computer program,” a woman with a perfect
figure, proportion and a devious, outwardly sweet yet devilish personality…a complete sociopath. The program worked, and Project .EVIL/NICE was born. The character was
called “Shadow Queen,” for its incredible powers. It had more than 1 billion
times the processing power of a human brain, and possessed such abilities as
nanotube construction, weather control and the closest thing to dark magic as
it was possible to get to. Needless to say, this character was quite a piece of
work, to say the least. At first, it was just that: a computer program, like
any normal video game character. However, it began to use its vast powers to
control the house’s electrical grid, then the neighborhood’s. Lights would
flicker on and off, phones would ring and no one answered except Hexadecimal’s
seductive voice. The new neighbors, upon experiencing this problem, began to
fear that their new house was haunted. It was, in effect, because Hexadecimal
had crept into the other house’s home network as well, and “possessed” their
computers. Soon, very eerie things began happening all over the neighborhood,
such as “Hex’s” voice coming out of an Xbox Live headset when the volume was
turned off, T.V.s turning on by themselves in the middle of the night, even
cell phones receiving phantom text messages when plugged into an outlet, such
as “I’m watching you, sweetie…” or “Nice place you’ve got here…I could sure go
for a martini right about now.” Computers often acted as if another computer
was controlling them; I.E., infected with a virus. Soon, the entire
neighborhood was infected. Sheldon Muntz, realizing what had happened, began
trying to reign in the program, but it was far too late…The rest was history."
This scenario is clearly science-fiction, an original piece by me, but the AI in this scenario is following Asimov's concepts of robotics, and how a robot or AI could harm humanity. More recently, Ray Kurzweil explained that robots may not always follow Asimov's laws of robotics, and that if a program became advanced enough, it could become erratic and eventually take on human-like thought patterns, without actually "thinking."
