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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?
Gone to headshots, every one. When will they ever learn?
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
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
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"
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.
No good deed goes unpunished...
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
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
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.
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.