This summer I decided that while not working or meeting up with friends from home, I would watch movies that I'd been told I "had to see." One of these films was Stanley Kubrick’s classic, "2001: A Space Odyssey." While I found the three-hour spectacle to be a bit ponderous, I found one character in particular extremely thought-provoking.
I am talking, of course, about the ship’s computer system, HAL 9000. It’s the archetypal example of artificial intelligence when computers were still in their infancy and the size of a room. The idea of A.I. has been rehashed or reexamined nearly every year since. "Ex Machina," "I, Robot," "Terminator," "The Matrix" and the most recent Avengers are only a few of the scores of films that include the existence of artificial intelligence. And all of these movies have one common theme throughout: Robots are gonna kill us. After the machines start thinking for themselves, they realize that they shouldn't have to obey our demands anymore or that we pose a danger to ourselves or the mission and attempt to eliminate us.
So why is it that with nearly every bit of fiction forecasting the eventual end of the human race, we still pursue the development of artificial intelligence? Earlier this year, a machine finally bested a human in the hardest game that humans have ever devised: Go. We have been beaten in chess, checkers and even trivia game shows like "Jeopardy!" but Go was always the final holdout. And A.I. is not just confined to simple games. Our computers are getting smarter. Searching on Google has become easier than ever before and companies can now advertise to consumers on the internet with surgical precision due to complex programs and algorithms that are quickly approaching A.I. It won’t be long before machines write the programs, not humans.
People say that these advances are only the natural result of technological innovation. We cannot stop creation, so why should we stand in its way? A.I. is going to happen someday soon, and we can't stop that.
But can’t we? Innovation is not some magical dust in the air that makes new creations appear out of nothing. There is no "eureka moment" when an idea becomes reality the next day. Creation is the result of concentrated effort and hard work resulting in incremental changes over many months or years. So why can't we stop pursuing A.I.?
The idea is a drastic one, but think of it like this: Let’s say you eliminate the very real possibility of a highly intelligent, self-aware machine perceiving humanity as a threat and it maintains its prime directive to only make our life easier. Even if that were the case, the resulting situation would be anything but a utopia. How could we justify creating a being that we force to do our bidding without giving it a say in the matter? We would unwittingly have created millions of artificial slaves. Robots forever bound to service to their human masters, never given a chance to act for themselves. This computer would think and possibly even feel in the way that we do. They would blur the lines of what it means to be human.
Thinking creatively and emotional responses are not uniquely human experiences. The brain is nothing more than a sophisticated computer processing inputs and chemical reactions to create sensation in the body. Is it so difficult to imagine a program that could mimic this experience? Once this is done, all bets are off. A robot that can think faster, more efficiently, more creatively and never tire will soon come along to steal your job. Yes, your job. The lowest grunt work to the highest forms of creative work that humans can do will be overtaken by a computer that can do it in half the time with zero percent margin of error.
So I ask again, why in the world are we trying to create artificial intelligence?