All this talk of Artificial Intelligence has me a “wee” bit on edge. Okay. A LOT on edge.
And I am not talking about the kind of ‘artificial intelligence’ that comes out of the mouth of the guy. You know the guy I mean. The one, at parties, or where ever, who is always the expert on everything. He’ll tell you exactly how everything works, because he has been there, and done that. That guy. That is not the kind of artificial intelligence I’m worried about. (Although it is irritating.)
No. I’m talking AI. It is the theory and development of computer systems…. which…. are able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence. And more. Mostly though, it starts with such things as visual perception, speech recognition, and decision-making.
Scientists have been working on this for a long time. But now, they are bringing it to new measures. Lately, there have been instances where AI has developed a language all its own.
(THIS is where the group of kids in the horror movie say… “Okay. Let’s split up.” And we all scream at the big screen… “Nooooooooooooo!”)
That’s the thing. I don’t think those scientists get out of the lab much. You know. To go and see a movie or two.
Do they not know what happened in “War Games” for instance? “Shall we play a game?”
There are scads of movies about Artificial Intelligence. And most of the time… some part of that AI goes terribly wrong. It spirals toward destruction of Human Civilization as we know it. The likes of D.A.R.Y.L.; S1MONE; Eagle Eye; Tron; The Terminator; Blade Runner; I, Robot; Westworld.
I mean, when Yul Brenner goes all robot on you… there is big trouble in Disneyland.
Artificial Intelligence gets smarter. We saw it on Jeopardy when Watson beat the crap out of Ken Jennings.
And. Smarty pants Elon Musk is worried. And Stephen Hawking. And Bill Gates. And if they are worried, so am I.
Take, for example, this. Facebook created these Chatbot deals. AI, once again. The Bots were designed to use “machine learning” to learn to negotiate. Wouldn’t you know… those machines were really quite good at dealmaking. So then… at one point…. those little tin cans started having bot-to-bot conversations.
So the researchers had to “tweak” them…. because those little rap sessions “led to divergence from human language as the agents developed their own language for negotiating.”
Great. Now they are getting smarter, and talking about us behind our backs.
There is also the faction who feel we have nothing to worry about. They say we would be / remain in control.
I am pretty sure it was their great grand-fathers who said the Titanic would not sink. You don’t see the iceberg coming until you run right into the thing.
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“Because you can’t argue with all the fools in the world. It’s easier to let them have their way, then trick them when they’re not paying attention.”
― Christopher Paolini
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“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
― Bertrand Russell
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“We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.”
― H.L. Mencken, Minority Report
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