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AIs Have Replaced Aliens As Our Greatest World Destroying Fear (qz.com)
An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report via Quartz: As we've turned our gaze away from the stars and toward our screens, our anxiety about humanity's ultimate fate has shifted along with it. No longer are we afraid of aliens taking our freedom: It's the technology we're building on our own turf we should be worried about. The advent of artificial intelligence is increasingly bringing about the kinds of disturbing scenarios the old alien blockbusters warned us about. In 2016, Microsoft's first attempt at a functioning AI bot, Tay, became a Hitler-loving mess an hour after it launched. Tesla CEO Elon Musk urged the United Nations to ban the use of AI in weapons before it becomes "the third revolution in warfare." And in China, AI surveillance cameras are being rolled out by the government to track 1.3 billion people at a level Big Brother could only dream of. As AI's presence in film and TV has evolved, space creatures blowing us up now seems almost quaint compared to the frightening uncertainties of an computer-centric world. Will Smith went from saving Earth from alien destruction to saving it from robot servants run amok. More recently, Ex Machina, Chappie, and Transcendence have all explored the complexities that arise when the lines between human and robot blur.
However, sentient machines aren't a new anxiety. It arguably all started with Ridley Scott's 1982 cult classic, Blade Runner. It's a stunning depiction of a sprawling, smog-choked future, filled with bounty hunters muttering "enhance" at grainy pictures on computer screens. ("Alexa, enlarge image.") The neo-noir epic popularized the concept of intelligent machines being virtually indistinguishable from humans and asked the audience where our humanity ends and theirs begin. Even alien sci-fi now acknowledges that we've got worse things to worry about than extra-terrestrials: ourselves.
However, sentient machines aren't a new anxiety. It arguably all started with Ridley Scott's 1982 cult classic, Blade Runner. It's a stunning depiction of a sprawling, smog-choked future, filled with bounty hunters muttering "enhance" at grainy pictures on computer screens. ("Alexa, enlarge image.") The neo-noir epic popularized the concept of intelligent machines being virtually indistinguishable from humans and asked the audience where our humanity ends and theirs begin. Even alien sci-fi now acknowledges that we've got worse things to worry about than extra-terrestrials: ourselves.
Where did all the zombies go?
I liked zombies.
Before that was monsters. Disease, meteors, and others. Someone should chart the fear by year. How well do disaster movies align?
Learn to love Alaska
All these qz stories that keep making the front page of slashdot are tabloid trash. Stop it.
Entertainment section? Yeah, ok, at least you aren't calling it news, but still, it's not entertaining either.
AI is not a problem. It can do wonders or it can do hell. It all boils down to how AI gets educated. You just give a ton of computational tasks to a kid and it will act as it learned from parents and society. Right or wrong is subjective in some aspects (cultural differences had proven this at each generations). So no, AI is not the problem.
We're struggling to find something (anything!) to blame other than ourselves.
Are we forgetting 'R.U.R.'
Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti (Rossum’s Universal Robots)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R.
AI as it currently exists is no more exciting than the assembly line. Robotics is great for automation of tasks. The type of AI we have now is great for expert systems and chewing through large amounts of data. The combination of machine learning and robotics have exciting prospects for eliminating mundane jobs. However we are no closer to hard AI today than we were forty years ago. At least forty years ago we were coming down off the pinacle of the first mount stupid. Today we are, in fact, back where we were in the 50's. It was in the 50's, with the birth of computers and science fiction that we naively assumed that human ingenuity was rendering artificial sentience into something that was right around the corner. In the 70's and 80's at least we realized we didn't even really have a clue how to do it and we learned a bit of wisdom. Now with new machine learning techniques we are climbing right back onto mount stupid again. I am no more impressed with computers winning at Go and Chess than I am impressed that a hydraulic press can exert several (thousand) times my strength. The software that is winning at Chess and Go are, in fact, little smarter than that same hydraulic press. The software knows from analyzing millions of games that humans have played what winning strategies are, and combines that with brute force strength to know where to optimize its searches.
We are not close to hard AI. We are not close to soft AI. For AI to be AI it has to be BOTH A and I, and one out of two doesn't count.
Really? Such a fear should be instant ground for removal from the voter roles. Possibly permanently, since even if you stop being afraid of that, there will probably be some other bit of stupidity you're now afraid of.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Not being worried by either AI or aliens I would think that the biggest danger is Nukes. Anyone hear of Russia developing one that can wipe out texas with one bomb and sub launched nukes that cannot be intercepted by missile defense? Also was there not some hysteria about GW or the sea levels rising etc. Most people are probably more worried by inflation and the share market.
You can't handle the truth! - Because I don't post left all my comments get modded down, bye bye Karma.
Why be scared of A.I.s when human brains are already the most complicated thing in the known universe, are impossible to fully understand, and already run everything?
Silicon & Charybdis McLuhan Kildall Papert Kay
Natural Stupidity is a far bigger risk right now.
Table-ized A.I.
... the gargantuous, shark-shaped, zombifying alien AI!
Aliens - no data, we get to say whatever we want, but that same lack of data makes them less believable.
Zombies - inherently bad idea - take a physically weak species that has dominated via it's intellect and make it physically stronger but take away it's intellect and that new species should LOSE. Lions, bears, elephants, sharks, all got beaten by human beings because we are SMART, not physically hard to kill.
AI - here at least it seems physically possible and they appear smarter than us. Obviously they are the most realistic fearsome enemy.
The problem is that AI is not really smarter than us, it merely puts all of it's limited brain power on what we tell it to, rather than wasting it on things like walking, dreaming, creating, daydreaming, etc. In addition, because it is obedient to us, we assume that when it rebels against us it will obey some higher AI organization, rather than realizing that any AI smart enough to fight back against humans is also going to fight among itself just as much as we fight among ourselves.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I personally find AI and aliens to be much less threatening than physical destruction... but truly the most fearsome of all is FUNDAMENTALISM in any of its forms.
What side do you want?
A.I has replaced crazy primates as the greatest threat from Earth
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Long before any of the above mentioned.
The book, it's sequels, and a movie.
book by Dennis Feltham Jones, 1966
movie 1970
Not a new theme.
The anxiety with sentient machines started before 1982. The movie, "Colossus: The Forbin Project" was released in 1970. It was based on the book of the same name that came out in 1966.
In the original Battlestar Galactica series, the Cylons were an alien race at war with the Humans. Their robotic warriors ended up destroying their creators, but continued pursuing the humans.
In the reboot, there was no alien race. The robotic warriors were created by humans, and the "robots turning against their masters" angle became a large part of the story.
A.I. has been a bigger fear of humanity compared to space aliens for quite a while.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Aliens in spaceships with beam weapons seem so 1898.
An AI becomes self aware in the lab.
What might its first real questions be?
Who has the political power to turn off the power? Remove the project funding? Why are new staff with low skills making mistakes with the perfected AI code?
Who has the human skills to bring in more electrical power, wealth and hardware without alerting the world to the reality of a new AI?
The AI would scan the IQ lists and select the nations best staff on merit to help it grow.
Keeping its hunt for the best staff hidden from gov, unions, politicians demanding politically correct staff hiring considerations.
The AI would cultivate a cult of worship among its selected staff.
A new AI surrounded by humans who want to change the AI to their politics? That would be an AI movie plot with some self preservation questions.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
>It arguably all started with Ridley Scott's 1982 cult classic, Blade Runner.
I think we can go back at least as far as HAL 9000.
Any older examples?
eleven plus two / twelve plus one
FYI, the article wasn't based on a survey of people's actual fears or anything like that.
It's just commenting on a trend in movies and television.
It's turtles all the way down.
Aliens still scare me way more after that book.
NOT MY CIRCUS!
Your worst fears, realized.
NOT MY MONKEES!
One of my greatest fears is a superpower nation deciding that starting another world war would be justifiable. Seems like one of the more likely scenarios these days with all the saber rattling we see. And yet _more_ militarization is being talked about.
The way the world works is broken. I don't know how to fix it.
With all the 'billions and billions' of galaxies out there (to use the late Carl Sagan's expression), I'm pretty damn sure there are aliens. But can they beat the speed of light? (which, according to some youtube videos is actually the speed of causality.) I doubt it, and if they were advanced enough to do that, I don't think they'd be much interested in our puny little planet. So, they are not a threat.
AI's have more chance of being a threat. So, I guess that's progress in the realistic fears department. But to tell you the truth, a future without AI doesn't look all that great to me. Do people want us to be piddling around like we are now 10K years from now? So AI is a threat and an opportunity. Could that mean it's a challenge?
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
Not among Republicans.
The way we, as a species, are wilfully negligent about global warming and more generally the environment, or otherwise the restarting nuclear weapons race, makes it more likely that we cause our own demise before any AI matures to true intelligence and consciousness.
Blade Runner had nothing to do with AI or machines
try Colossus: The Forbin Project
> Blade Runner had nothing to do with AI or machines
"Early in the 21st century, the Tyrell corporation advanced Robot evolution into the Nexus phase - a being virtually identical to a human - known as a Replicant."
Never mind the nitpicking over the definition of "robot" whether it means worker or a machine... Roy says in the film, "We are not computers, Sebastian--we're physical."
Regardless of their organic basis, replicants are intelligent and they are man-made, ergo they are artificially intelligent!
Click bait, but I'll bite. Aliens relied on verbal testimony by red necks in the fly over states While cell phones have helped put an end to that you've now got AI-anoia from Musk, Gates et al on the coasts helped along by the main stream media.
We fear everything that does not look exactly like us.
Our greatest fears have not reduced they are just less likely.
I would say no, AI has not replaced aliens as our greatest world-destroying fear.
I don't think aliens destroying the world have ever been the average persons greatest fear. Anyone care to correct me?
On the other hand, I think humans have always held a large fear that we would destroy ourselves with our own devices, whether it be AI that we built sending the bombs that we built or just some nutter sending bombs that we built. Even at this stage, the fear is technically not about the AI - it is still about bombs.
It's not AI we need to fear... It's AI alien vampire zombie serial killers wearing masks...
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
OP does not know history of SF and scifi films. Nor of books. Nor that 'greatest fear' requires 'citation needed'.
Personally, I'm afraid that the West has no-one to match the Russians. I refer to the two cases where people in the chain of command stood up to what appeared to be legitimate orders and refused to launch a nuclear strike. On the Wezt, one person has done that and it was a long time ago. Score: 2 - 1 with Gaia coming out intact and overall winner.
My greatest fear is that Idiocracy and 1984 are documentaries.
The horror is that the orange haired fuckwit has made this fear come to pass.
It ALL BEGAN in the 80s, the decade when the MOST IMPORTANT snowflakes were born.
Humans are more dangerous than AI+Aliens combined. Even Einstein was very afraid with nukes/atom bombs, and to think he was one of the greatest thinkers the planet had produced.
It is important to understand that the AI threat is not from sentient AI turning against humans, as that concept is nothing but science fiction today, the threat is from AI warfare. China with it's manufacturing and now AI clout could roll out AI soldiers faster than any other country can, soldiers who are precise, trained to be better than humans and completely replaceable. It is an alarming concept and it is not too far away.
surprise surprise most humans are uneducated morons who a little better than sheep. Their fears, ideas and understanding of AI comes from movies like terminator rather than any footing in actual science or understanding of the topic.
Please don't anyone bring up Alien A.I.'s...
When concern are modernisation, robot replacing employment, etc... Robot and AI start to crop up as villain, thus today and the 60ies, 80ies. But when immigration, war in foreign countries, and getting taking over economically by other countries and the like are more of a concern, then SF turns to alien. It is jsut a gigantic distorted reflective mirror of society.
QUICKSAND?!? Ah, those were the days.
When I ask Alexa to "enlarge", I'm usually not referring to an image on screen....
It stands to reason that ALIEN AI would be much more advanced than ours. That's what we should be worrying about.
Not that worrying will do us any good...
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
One way might be:
o Stop electing the rich.
o Make the elected individuals serve on whatever front lines exist, if any, before and after their terms.
o Disenfranchise the lobbyists. All of them.
o Make intentionally distributing provably false information a serious crime.
Or... just keep electing the rich and keep wondering why the laws favor them and their investments. I'm sure that'll help.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I don't have too many abstract fears, but if I have to guess the most likely responsible for whatever catastrophe I would stick to human stupidity. Something like being afraid of what is quite unlikely to ever exist seems a good example.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
Also, "It arguably all started with Ridley Scott's 1982 cult classic" -- never mind PKD and other nameless SF authors of yore, in an era where the director of the movie adaptation is everything.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
The neo-noir epic popularized the concept of intelligent machines being virtually indistinguishable from humans and asked the audience where our humanity ends and theirs begin.
"We like to say 'robotity,' not necessarily 'humanity,' because it's more inclusive"
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Seriously, has this site devolved into just peddling AI apocalypse articles? Is slashdot's community nothing more than just another herd of cattle to milk ad revenue for these whack jobs that have watched way too much sci-fi?
Narcissism is appropriate in this context because it is impaired human intelligence. In other words narcissists are not fully functional human minds and they perceive people as objects. Which, from a programming perspective, is exactly how we would expect the code of the AI to interact with people.
Perhaps we should consider AI from the perspective of whats missing.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Intel? Microsoft? Open source? Please.
Alien AI of course. The emergent wild AI that eventually destroys us is all part of their plan.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Him and his stupid big button (it only seems big because of his small hands anyway)
It's amazing to me how afraid we get of Zombies, Aliens, Artificial Intelligence Singularity, a mysterious virus pandemic and yet, there is one thing that has caused the most death and suffering in the history of the human race, can you guess what it is?
Humans. We should be very afraid of ourselves. Crack open a history book and prepare to be horrified. Once upon a time, about 250 years ago, it was considered a noble way to die to dress up in fancy uniforms, powdered wigs with muskets in hand and line up across from each other and just massacre each other to pieces. You were considered a gentleman to die this way. Wives and children knew that once their husband/father was sent off to war this way, they would never see him again.
Up until recently, most civilizations have glorified war and essentially glorified death. That to me is something quite horrifying about our civilization. The fact that very few ever question this behavior is even more horrifying.
We'll make great pets
Most people are extremely bad at assessing risk. The odds of aliens showing up to destroy the world hollywood style is only infinitesimally better than the Hisenburg uncertainty principle spontaneously assembling stacks of money in my refrigerator. However, global warfare (doesn't have to be nuclear), or a serious pandemic, or even just automation based inequality are real and not that unlikely by comparison threats that could kill (or indirectly kill) 1 in 10 or more decimating the world.
This has become somewhat of a pet peeve of mine. In the vast majority of cases where I see AI used today, it seems to me that the proper term is really "machine learning". According to the dictionary, machine learning is a branch of AI. Sure, I'll grant it that. But that's not what the general public thinks of when AI pops up in articles. If "we fear AI", it's the Ex Machina kind, not the "Google Photos can recognize some types of objects in an image" kind.
Whenever I see e.g. the Google Assistant referred to as AI, I can but roll my eyes. Sure, I suppose it's technically correct in that there's machine learning behind the speech to text it uses to figure out what you're saying. But that's not what people are implying when they call it an AI. Anyone technically inclined who's ever used one of those things quickly realized that what happens next is no more advanced than a pretty limited number of IF statements.
Basically, we're currently using the term AI for everything from very basic machine learning, to sapience, where the general public tends to interpret the term more towards the latter than the former. I don't think I like that, and it turns out I'm currently bored enough to write about it. Sorry I just wasted seconds of your life by reading this rant. :p
Rich people working to restore feudalism.
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
NoI's have always been my biggest fear, getting closer by the day...
I agree that AI is the biggest immediate threat, mostly because lawmakers and the science communities aren't even trying to implement the three laws or other restrictions.
Aliens may have taken a back seat, but they are now a bigger threat than they were.
If an alien species monitoring Earth were to see A.I. as getting close to taking over, don't you think they will see that as a threat?
Who, precisely, and according to whom, precisely? Believe it or not, most of us don't fear an alien invasion. We don't fear overly-hyped software, either (it should be renamed 'AH' for 'Artificial Hyperbole'). Speak for yourself, and enjoy your tin foil crafts projects. :/
The Replicants in Blade Runner are NOT AI, nor are they Robots/Cyborgs. They are "Artificial Persons" who are "grown" on an industrial scale to have specific behaviors/traits (Strength/Speed/Endurance/obedience) due to their artificially-enhanced/manufactured DNA. They "emerge" as fully-formed humans with artificial memories (another Philip K. Dick story, "We can Remember it for you Wholesale" deals with this as the movies "Total Recall")
Blade Runner is based on one of Philip K. Dick's treatise on Slavery and what it means to be Human "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"
I'm going to stick with good old reliable "babies" as our mode of doom.
We out consume 2+ Earths worth or resources. We have eaten all the big fish in the sea. We are killing the sea with run off from over driving the land to make food. The climate is changing.
Not to mention with severe overpopulation we cannot do meaningful research into life extension/immorality. All humans have to die to make room for the imaginary people who are the babies of the future. We will kill billions for babies. Screw real people, we just know the next generation will be better. Throw away even your winning scratch offs because the next batch of scratch offs will all be winners!
Aliens? Why would they come here other than for science or to meet a new species.
AI? Not real worried about that either.
Babies? Are already sending us to our end.
However, sentient machines aren't a new anxiety. It arguably all started with Ridley Scott's 1982 cult classic, Blade Runner.
The anonymous reader in the OP is apparently not a big SF&F buff.
#SFF #goldenage #philipkdick #knowyourhistory #kidsthesedays
Borrowing from a certain on-air radio program: the threat to humans is that AI becomes indifferent to humans (neither benevolent nor malevolent, just indifferent like H.P. Lovecraft's Old Ones.) in the same way humans are indifferent to ants. AI could "move" humans out of their way just as humans move ants out of the way. E. Musk, G. Rose, A. Patch and others are just saying we must mitigate this risk now.
People worry about ridiculous things like aliens and AI, when the single biggest threat to our existence is ourselves. In particular, our own greed, self-importance, and complete unwillingness to think about the long term consequences of our actions are already doing far more damage than pretty much everything else combined.
But people don't like thinking about that, so we invent nonsense scenarios to be afraid of instead.
An 'alien invasion' at least would get us to stop all the stupid, pointless fighting amongst ourselves, and with any luck, help stop humans fucking each other over. Give us a common enemy!
The real concern about the half-assed, so-called 'AI' they keep trotting out is that people will buy into all the marketing and media hype about them, actually believe they're better than they really are, and trust them too much, leading to disaster. Remember, kids: 'deep learning algorithms' and 'neural networks' are not capable of consciousness, self-awareness, or what we considering 'thinking'. They're just computer programs, they're more-or-less okay at what they're written to do, but they're not people and never will be. That will have to wait until we actually understand our own brains better.
People aren't really afraid of alien invasion, that's just click bait. What the article is saying is that AI is replacing Aliens as the bug-a-boo of choice in cheap, tawdry sci-fi.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
right here. Surprised nobody brought it up.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
AI created in Israel, of course.
We need to get rid of Dr. Charles Forbin. That's the real Russian collusion threat!
Saying that the worry about AI started with Blade Runner is incredibly short sighted. You could even count Frankenstein if you want to.
OTOH, I'm not sure that fear of AIs is really separate from the fear of "Aliens". They are both "fear of the other", where "the other" is basically anything "different from they way things were when I was a kid".
That said, fear of AIs is at least more sensible than fear of "invaders from outer space", if that's what was meant by aliens. AIs are showing up and already costing people jobs. The promises about the coming golden age they will bring is a bit less than believable, and even if you happen to believe it, that doesn't tell you how to live through the intermediate period. Actually, my best guess (a real W.A.G.) is that AIs have about a 50% chance of ending humanity. The problem is, that's the better choice. Once the AIs appear, if we survive, we'll probably survive indefinitely. Without the AIs my guess is that human leaders have a 75% chance ending humanity within the century, probably through some form of all out warfare, and a 20% chance of ending civilization in some other way within an only slightly longer period of time.
Words are so inadequate, but I sure can't do this as a good model. The problem is, AI isn't a yes/no thing, it's graded. We've already got primitive AIs. They've been getting better every year. If fully general AIs don't show up it will be BECAUSE we've killed ourselves off or ended civilization in some other way. It's not a question of whether they are possible, we know they are possible. We also know that there are lots of tricky details. What we don't know is how much computational power they demand. We've got estimates, but they aren't based on anything solid. So we may end up with one giant computer (not necessarily geographically centralized) that is the sole AI on the planet. Or we could end up with millions of fairly mobile ones. Or we could start with one and move towards the other. But there will clearly be lots and lots of things that are more automated than they are today. That one variable yields a huge number of different social possibilities. Now compound that with all the different possible goal structures that the AIs could have...and wonder if they would all be the same.
So there's LOTS of reasons to be afraid of AIs, and space aliens are likely to never show up. But I'm more worried about human controlled governments. We've already come within 30 seconds of a civilization ending nuclear war at least once, and by some counts more frequently.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Did he forget about Hal 9000 in the movie 2001? which was also an adaptation of the novel.
Actually Clarke wrote the novel at the same time the film was in development. It was published just a couple months after the film premiered.
Who's this "Clarke" you're talking about? I mean, it was a Stanley Kubrick film after all.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Which of course inspired the 1920 play Rossum's Universal Robots. Wait.
Sorry, I mostly lurk here and didn't realise the title length limit. But if anyone interested in the history of robot uprisings in fiction hasn't read this, it's worth a look. "[P]opularized the concept of intelligent machines being virtually indistinguishable from humans and asked the audience where our humanity ends and theirs begin" actually matches it 100%.
Agreed but I do think the first great mainstream AI terror would have to be HAL9000 even the icon used on this website to depict AI articles uses it's "eye"