Robots Gone Wild: Scientists Have Duty to Protect Mankind from Artificial Intelligence

Despite such dire warnings, however, so many people remain utterly complacent over the fact that this AI evolution will, as Hawking put it, “outperform humans.” As if all that matters in life is raw performance.

This is not breaking news. The writing was already on the wall in 1997, when the Russian chess grandmaster, Garry Kasparov, lost his very first chess match to IBM’s computer ‘Deep Blue.’

At the time of this match over 20 years ago, the world of computer technology was still in its relative infancy. Twenty years ago may not seem like much time, until we consider Moore’s Law, which states that the doubling of computer processing speed occurs every 18 months, an exponential rate of transformation that no mortal human can hope to keep pace with.

Yet not only are humans welcoming the arrival of robots armed with awe-inspiring artificial intelligence, strength and agility, they are even increasingly willing to engage in sexual relations with them.

That step towards the very brink of madness testifies to the disintegration of society and social relations that have already suffered a major blow ever since the dawn of so-called ‘social media;’ which is actually anti-social at its core, according to the very people who introduced it.

Chamath Palihapitiya, former vice-president for user growth at Facebook before leaving in 2011, said in a presentation at the Stanford Business School: “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth.”

At the same time, robots and artificial intelligence are revolutionizing everything – from the way we do our shopping to how modern wars are being fought.  The example at the top of the article of judges relying on AI to determine the fate of criminals in their courtrooms highlights one of the great downsides of this revolution in artificial intelligence – the veritable earthquake that is going to occur in a vast number of professions.

When humans suddenly awake to the reality that they are in competition for a job against a machine that never gets sick, never needs a vacation, never needs a paycheck, while performing the job far better than the frail human, then it doesn’t require much imagination to see where we are heading on the jobs front.

Thus, it would be a very big mistake to believe that we are helpless in the face of this AI revolution, which seems to be the regular message from the tech industry.

The best way to respond to the threat of super-smart, super-strong robots displacing humans in every field – from the job market to the battlefield – is for scientists and engineers to take a stand and ensure humans are not left behind in the dust.

Yet that is exactly what is not happening.

According to a report in The Financial Times, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is launching an ambitious program “to understand human intelligence and apply that knowledge to develop intelligent machines.”

Dubbed ‘MIT IQ’, the program is determined to answer two bold questions: “How does human intelligence work in engineering terms? And how can we use that deep grasp of human intelligence to build wiser and more useful machines?”

I think the more pertinent question would be: How can we build wiser humans in the face of these potentially devastating new technologies that threaten to disrupt every aspect of our lives?

There is still time to achieve that goal, but the technological clock is ticking – exponentially.