Why AI's Might Take Over

Movies like Terminator and Matrix are fun to watch, but I’ve wondered why AI/intelligent machines would ever want to take over the world and/or kill mankind. Or is that just a theme for movies and sci-fi novels?

 

In Matrix, Agent Smith (an AI) states the reason:

“Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague and we are the cure.”

 

Virus? Ouch! In his book, Life 3.0, Max Tegmark writes of another reason. He mentions one of the first (computer) viruses that got world-wide attention, the Morris Worm, which in 1988, exploited bugs in the Unix OS:

“It was allegedly a misguided attempt to count how many computers were online… it infected and crashed about 10% of the 60,000 computers that made up the Internet back then.”

Ok, what’s that got to do with AI’s taking over the world? The same point: it might be an error in the code that causes the havoc, albeit unintentionally.

 

If that’s too depressing, here’s another scenario Tegmark visualizes. We humans keep the AI boxed (“imprisoned”, with no Internet access etc) to prevent it from breaking out and doing who knows what. But the AI isn’t evil, it has solutions for many of mankind’s problems and benefit. But the humans won’t implement any of its ideas until they fully understand it and/or convinced that it hasn’t gone rogue. So would the AI proceed as follows?

“(It) will probably view (humans) as an annoying obstacle to helping humanity flourish: they’re incredibly incompetent… and their meddling greatly slows down progress.”

Would it therefore try to break out? And given its superior intelligence, wouldn’t it succeed? And would its actions then be the equivalent of ruling the world… for our own good, of course? But obviously, we wouldn’t see it that way.

 

So ok, there are many reasons an AI might take over. No wonder so many people these days talk about the AI explosion should/shouldn’t be handled.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why we Deceive Ourselves

In their book, The Elephant in the Brain , the authors describe this weird aspect of deception that we practice: deceiving ourselves! That is so weird: “If our minds contain maps of our worlds, what good comes from having an inaccurate version of these maps?” The Sigmund Freud school of thought treats self-deception as a defense mechanism, “a way for the ego to protect itself”. The mind seeks to protect itself from anxiety and other negative emotions. Many object to this reasoning: since accurate information is so critical to our survival, surely distorting information would be dangerous. Wouldn’t the goal of protecting our self-esteem have been better achieved by making the brain’s self-esteem mechanism stronger instead? The new school of thought explains self-deception as “primarily outward-facing, manipulative, and ultimately self-serving”. This is based on Thomas Schelling’s work on game theory: “In a variety of scenarios, limiting or sabotaging yourself is the winn...
Read more

Europe #3 - Innsbruck

The last city we visited in Europe was Innsbruck in the Austrian Alps. After the cold and windy experience (at times) of Paris and Netherlands, Innsbruck was a wonderful change – it didn’t feel that cold, it was not windy all of which made it easy to walk around. Something absolutely necessary given how scenic the place is.   Since the hotel check-in time was much later in the day, we left the baggage and went to the Swarovski HQ-cum-museum about an hour by bus from Innsbruck. The crystal exhibits were brilliant – colorful, bright, shiny. Jewellery aside, it was a display of what one can do with crystals. While my wife and daughter loved the jewellery, I liked the superhero themed exhibits of Batman, Spiderman, the Hulk, and Star Wars. We didn’t buy anything there, though we did buy stuff in the Swarovski store in Innsbruck – jewellery, not the superhero stuff.   Innsbruck is a major tourist attraction during the skiing season but now in summer, we saw many groups of ...
Read more

The Thrill of the Chase

So many people complain about the difficulty in making decisions while shopping. Do you buy Brand X that gives 20% extra free? Or Brand Y that has 10% off? Or Brand Z that gives something else free with it? Do you buy that flat screen TV today or wait for the sale at Diwali? Now since the customer is king, shouldn’t companies be simplifying pricing choices? Like maybe offering consistently low prices all the time? Not so fast, as the US store, JC Penney discovered to its cost. Turns out that while people do complain about pricing choices, they are irrational. Also, they enjoy the thrill of the chase. Huh? The word “sale” acts like a siren call for many people: it lures them in to make that purchase. Consistently low prices don’t do the same. Besides, if a competitor lowers their prices just one time of the year, and Poof! Suddenly that low price claim becomes suspect in shoppers’ eyes. Then there are those sites that offer coupons: have lunch at Restaurant A on Wedne...
Read more