2014 National Wormhole Week and Blog Hop! 3/10-16/2014
This blog hop and blog tour are brought to you by: Alex Cavanaugh, L. Diane Wolfe, and Stephen Tremp– the author of Escalation.
For 2014, the theme is to name one thing where science advances mankind, and one where technology with unforeseen consequences will go too far and set mankind back. Example: De-Extinction, or bringing back extinction species through back breeding, genetic engineering, and cloning. With all the breakthrough discoveries mankind is on the cusp of, are we playing God?
Feel free to reference movies and books too. These provide no shortage if inspiration. Speaking of de-extinction, the book and movie Jurassic Park comes to mind where science takes a huge leap forward, but also backfires. I’m looking forward to all the amazing responses everyone will have.
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Each day this week I’ll be sharing quotes from sci-fi movies or books along with my thoughts on how far technologies still needs to go and where I think it will go too far.
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Today I’m focusing on what happens when you teach something how to be destructive and then it becomes self-aware. In other words, this is about Artificial Intelligence gone bad (but wait, I’m throwing in a political twist).
The film I’ve picked for today isn’t so much a sci-fi masterpiece as it is a classic. The film itself has all the earmarks of an action film, but it’s the sci-fi warning of the advancement of intelligent machinery that fuels the impact of this blockbuster.
From the film, The Terminator I give you…
“Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.” ~Kyle Reese (from IMDB)
So the question at hand here is, should machines be given intelligence?
I want to take a slight step back and a brief tangent to consider the correlation between the possible rebellion of machines against their human masters and the human phenomena of slavery. I don’t claim to be anything close to an expert on the animal kingdom, but no examples of animals taking other animals as slaves spring to mind. What most North American citizen should have figured out by now, is that slavery only worked for as long as it did because the slaves hadn’t become self-aware. Once slaves started to understand and value their humanity and equality, the fight was on.
Back to this matter of A.I.
Why wouldn’t humans expect the same kind of reaction from other intelligent entities? I have no problems pushing the limits of technology to better the human race, but how far is too far? Is it possible to program intelligence without the risk of a greater awareness and understanding developing? You can exclude the words love, hate, sorrow, and oppression from a dictionary, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. Any intelligent entity would be able to figure that out eventually.
So is it worth the risk to endow machines with intelligence and hope they do better with it than we humans have or are we naïve to think that at some point there won’t be a power struggle?
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If you haven’t already, be sure to check out all the other ideas and theories about where technology is heading and going wrong.
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Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you like it let me know and share it with others. See you next time, Toi Thomas. #thetoiboxofwords