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.

Comments

Zombies

[AK Marc]

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?

Re:Zombies

[Anonymous Coward]

Where did all the zombies go?

Gone to headshots, every one. When will they ever learn?

Re:Zombies

[ShanghaiBill]

AI will probably never exist ...

Never say never. There is already a proof of concept: the human brain. Unless you believe in magic, there is no reason that what can be done with carbon can't also be done with silicon. Silicon neurons can switch 10 million times faster, and unlike biological brains, an AI would not be encumbered by the detritus of millions of years of sub-optimal evolutionary local maxima.

... so that is also an unrealistic fear.

That is exactly what they want us to believe.

Re:Zombies

[umghhh]

I think you touched on the mystery of (usually very unholy) spirit. One that generations of philosophers tried to uncover and usually produced something that failed to become a building block of our current understanding, quite a misery, if you ask me.
Current wave of discoveries of how brains work is probably just that - something that either will be forgotten or becomes another part of our knowledge. We will thus be so far as to be able just to describe what is happening and sometimes find relationships, we call rules. At some point we will have a picture of how it works that is much more detailed than what we have now. If that is then knowing what intelligence is? I guess our theories will be (they are already) a bit more sophisticated from the idea of soul but I have this nasty impression that we end up at that exactly - with very detailed knowledge of what this 'soul' needs to work with relation to hardware and software. In fact I believe soul is just an old term, we use intelligence, consciousnesses today.
Same same but different, as my friend used to say.

Re:Zombies

[butzwonker]

While we're at Doomsday scenarios, a flu-like viral infection with high mortality rate is still the biggest threat to current civilization. Bonus points if it transmits like a light cold first and then lays slumbering for a few weeks before it destroys its host.

AI is a load of bollocks

[Excelcia]

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.

Re:AI is a load of bollocks

[Immerman]

And the frightening thing about self-motivated action is that there's no reason to assume it requires consciousness. You feed a complicated enough system a complicated enough stream of inputs, and the resulting output will look close enough to self-motivated action that you could spend lifetimes debating the terminology.

Heck, we still have no conclusive evidence that humans are anything more than that - "consciousness" or "self awareness" might simply be a useful (or useless?) perceptual illusion of a biological behavior-optimizing matrix. Perhaps the result of a system that needs to predict the result of its outputs on its own future behavior? Obviously that self-model would need to be greatly simplified to avoid infinite recursion - but that would actually be consistent with human "self awareness" - how often do people do something that "wasn't like me"?

Fear of alien invasion.

[Nutria]

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.

Re:Fear of alien invasion.

[joe_frisch]

Why is it stupid? There are a lot of habitable planets. We have absolutely no idea of the probabilities of them developing life, developing intelligence, developing technology, deciding to invade. But if they do , we lose. (the guys on the ships win).

Its not likely but similar to asteroid impacts, its statistically probably more likely to kill you than terrorists are.

Re:Fear of alien invasion.

[joe_frisch]

I do have a rather good idea of how distant stars are, and of how improbable faster than light travel is - but you are taking a limited view of technology.

With technology we understand now you can get to about 0.1C, in maybe 100 years. (that is a power density that you can radiate with reasonable radiators, and energy densities compatible with fission reactors). So we are talking a few thousand year trips.

But is that so bad? Even humans have worked on single projects that lasted 100 years (like the NY 2nd avenue subway). Is a few thousand so out of line? Maybe they are longer lived that we are.

Maybe they have already exponentiated into most solar systems and are waiting. (robots, hibernation whatever). They could be "predators" who destroy any technological civilizations before they become an interstellar threat.

Maybe they do it for religious reasons. Or for something as incomprehensible to us as religion is to a cat. Maybe invasion is the wrong word, and they just want to build a hyperspace bypass (just kidding).

Likely - no. But I don't see how you can rule it out. Interstellar travel at a fraction of C is really not that difficult with technology we already understand (but of course don't yet have). Near C may be possible and we just don't know how yet. (making antimatter seems difficult but maybe there is a trick).

What about humans?

[HatofPig]

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?

Re:What about humans?

[Kjella]

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?

Because one man is still just one man, even if millions worship him as a living god. There's layers upon layers of sycophants that needed to buy into the idea of Hitler's Nazi Germany or Stalin's Soviet Union and the regime has to give them perks to buy that loyalty. Even the common folks can't be treated too poorly or you might have a popular revolt. And it's sort of implied that a human would want human subjects to rule.

An AI doesn't need people, just look at the Terminator series. Same with aliens and Independence Day. And nature plain old doesn't care if it's Armageddon for us. But I think the story line that Skynet will suddenly achieve consciousness and try to kill us is still fantasy. I do think AI is heading us towards an Elysium future though, where you have trillionaires with computer systems that act as their middle management. Like say Uber, you have a lot of drivers, some support staff in IT, accounting, legal etc. and a few executives but the day to day management of drivers is done by the app.

I think we'll see more and more of that where there's an algorithm in the middle between the people on top and people on the bottom. And that it'll lead to a disconnect where you have like a small ruling elite and a whole lot of people who suck it up. Which kinda sounds like a rehash of old times - it was a long way from the plebs to the Roman emperor - but I think this time it'll be different because with robots and AI they can probably disconnect more or less completely and let the computers run the numbers. It's a lot easier when you don't need to get your hands dirty.

Re:What about humans?

[sheramil]

Why be scared of A.I.s when human brains are already the most complicated thing in the known universe...

Excuse me, the Great Barrier Reef would like a w-... never mind, your puny human brains probably don't understand its language.

NS, not AI nor ET

[Tablizer]

Natural Stupidity is a far bigger risk right now.

Re:Not asteroids, nukes, or climatastrophy?

[chromaexcursion]

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.

Amen ;-)

What would an AI do?

[AHuxley]

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.

Re:What would an AI do?

[AHuxley]

A low IQ AI learning to talk for 2 hours would be an art movie. Going full "Rain man" in the computer lab...
A very smart AI having its human engineering cult looking after its political funding could result in a drama/thriller.

Re:Stop posting qz garbage

[Tuidjy]

However, sentient machines aren't a new anxiety. It arguably all started with Ridley Scott's 1982 cult classic, Blade Runner.

Even for an entertainment section, the editors need some brains and some knowledge of what happened before their teenage years.

Nearly one hundred years ago, Karel apek wrote R.U.R. It featured artificial humanoids, and ended with the human race extinct. No, sentient machines, organic (R.U.R. robots) or mechanical (the Golem of Prague) are nothing new, in fiction. And anxiety has always been tagging along.

Re:Wrong problem

[taiwanjohn]

The AP apocalypse is already upon us, meaning artificial persons -- and no, I don't mean Bishop from Aliens, I'm talking about corporations, which are considered artificial persons under the law. The Supreme Court, in its very finite wisdom, granted corporations "equal protection" under the 14th Amendment, which gives them to right to "speak" (ie: spend money) in elections and on lobbyists. They have already taken more-or-less complete control of the US government.

Our only hope is to end corporate personhood with a constitutional amendment, stating clearly that corporations are not people and money is not speech.

A couple of groups that are working on this issue now: MoveToAmend.org and Wolf-PAC.com

Re:Anxiety started in 1966

[14erCleaner]

It goes a lot further back than that. The 1921 play that coined the word "robot", R.U.R., ends with the robots exterminating humanity.

Not to be a spoilsport, but...

[OpenSourced]

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...

Re:Stop posting qz garbage

[Geekbot]

Zombies, AI, virus, Frankenstein, the Tower of Babel... they are all the same fear/warning/lesson. We aren't as smart as we think we are and the closer we get to trying to beat nature/god/the universe, it will backfire and we will suffer for it.

Re:Not asteroids, nukes, or climatastrophy?

[mjwx]

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.

I dont fear Artificial Intelligence as much as I fear Human Stupidity.

The latter is more likely to lead us to our doom.