Do androids dream of electric sheep? That's unclear, but I know for sure that every kid dreams of intelligent, thinking robots -- certainly every kid who goes on to work at CNET, in any case.
Today, my sci-fi-fuelled childhood fantasies of a bot with a "brain the size of a planet" are closer than ever to being realised. Artificial intelligence, or AI, the practice of making a machine behave in a smart way, is already changing our world and is, by my reckoning, the most fascinating field of technology right now.
But, as one professor I spoke to for this story put it, the "audacity of the attempt to build an intelligent machine" comes with a responsibility to know what we're meddling with. For everyone who ever thumbed through a copy of "I, Robot", mouth agape, here's what you need to know about AI in 2015.
Robots are very close to killing us
Mention the phrase "killer robot" in conversation and you'll almost certainly raise a smile, your peers doubtless imagining a glowing blue humanoid cyborg sadly pondering, "What is love?" before its eyes turn red and it self-destructs, obliterating the northern hemisphere.
That playful, cinematic and deeply poetic cultural artifact belies the very real threat humanity faces, however, not from killer robots overthrowing their human masters, but from intelligent robots following orders.Deeply ingrained in modern pop culture is the notion that some manner of AI uprising is on the cards -- James Cameron's iconic image of a Terminator stamping on a mound of human skulls is never far from any geek's thoughts.
The immediate threat, experts warn, comes in the form of autonomous weapons -- military machines capable of killing without permission from a human. From unmanned planes to missile defence systems to sentry robots, we've already got military hardware that functions with very little input from a human mind.
Groups such as the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots say we're inching ever closer to closing the loop, and letting machines handle our killing for us -- a scenario that's legally, pragmatically, and of course ethically, problematic.
The less sensationally named Future of Life Institute only days ago published an open letter signed by hundreds of AI researchers and famous tech personalities, warning, "If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow."
No comments:
Post a Comment