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Killer Robots Will Only Exist If We Are Stupid Enough To Let Them (theguardian.com)
Heritype quotes the Guardian's science correspondent:
The idea of killer robots rising up and destroying humans is a Hollywood fantasy and a distraction from the more pressing dilemmas that intelligent machines present to society, according to one of Britain's most influential computer scientists. Sir Nigel Shadbolt, professor of computer science at the University of Oxford, predicts that AI will bring overwhelming benefits to humanity, revolutionising cancer diagnosis and treatment, and transforming education and the workplace. If problems arise, he said, it will not be because sentient machines have unexpectedly gone rogue in a Terminator-like scenario.
"The danger is clearly not that robots will decide to put us away and have a robot revolution," he said. "If there [are] killer robots, it will be because we've been stupid enough to give it the instructions or software for it to do that without having a human in the loop deciding...."
However, Prof Shadbolt is optimistic about the social and economic impact of emerging technologies such as machine learning, in which computer programmes learn tasks by looking for patterns in huge datasets. "I don't see it destroying jobs grim reaper style," he said. "People are really inventive at creating new things for humans to do for which will pay them a wage. Leisure, travel, social care, cultural heritage, even reality TV shows. People want people around them and interacting with them."
"The danger is clearly not that robots will decide to put us away and have a robot revolution," he said. "If there [are] killer robots, it will be because we've been stupid enough to give it the instructions or software for it to do that without having a human in the loop deciding...."
However, Prof Shadbolt is optimistic about the social and economic impact of emerging technologies such as machine learning, in which computer programmes learn tasks by looking for patterns in huge datasets. "I don't see it destroying jobs grim reaper style," he said. "People are really inventive at creating new things for humans to do for which will pay them a wage. Leisure, travel, social care, cultural heritage, even reality TV shows. People want people around them and interacting with them."
because they'll be cheaper than maintaining a huge standing army and you don't have to worry about a general taking over. The engineers who keep the things running will lack the charisma and ambition to overthrow the current ruling class (they're part of the merchant class after all and will be doing well enough).
The way to stop this crap is pretty clear. Declare all human beings deserving of a decent quality of life and then make that happen. Get over the fact that you'll have a few surfer dudes and wellfare queens that don't work very much or at all (shouldn't be too hard, most of us have long since stopped getting mad at the idle rich with inherited wealth). If you want a population smart enough and paying enough attention to see this kind of crap coming and stop it you need to take care of their basic needs first. Otherwise they'll be too busy fighting for survival to do anything about it, which is kind of the point.
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I'm not sure this "professor" has really understood what AI was all about. Thinking that any AI-enabled device will just act as it is "programmed to" is clearly simplistic (although by itself a tautology, since software-based machines are just running 'programs') and a complete misconception of where AI is heading to IMO.
AI without the internal ability of devising new ways of doing things is NOT AI. And by being able to devise new ways, it has pretty much equal chances for them to be bad or good, all the more that humans have a hard time enough defining clearly what is good or bad, let alone machines.
This overly "optimistic" talk just sounds like marketing babble, more so than an educated opinion. Sorry "Sir'.
Killer robots will exist.
We show no evidence of learning from mistakes. Every president since eisenhower has been worse than the last one.
Absolutely. And there is a very effective, and unfortunately extremely plausible warning film about this released in November of last year called SlaughterBots .
All of the pieces of technology described in this short film are available, and can soon be integrated into the little drone packages depicted.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
It's 2018. We've broken through the "stupid enough" barrier.
We've completely demolished it.
Olsoc's rule if killy stuff : If there is a method of killing people, Governments will rush to it like a dog to bacon. The more barbaric, the more bacon.
Olsoc's second rule of killy stuff: Unless people are being killed, there isn't much point of warfare.
Which brings us to Olsoc's third rule of killy stuff: War robots will be specifically designed to kill people.That is how humans work.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.