Continuing from the previous blog …
There was a nearly obscure film
in 1970 - “The Forbin Project” – which I thought at that time deserved a 4-Star
rating for science fiction although by today’s standards it would likely be
classified a B-movie. Keep in mind
though that the novel from which the movie was based on was published in 1966
(written by D.F. Jones and still very well reviewed). From the 60s all through the 70s, the idea of
personal and super computers, tablets, smart phones and the internet was still
the domain of science fiction writers and technology dreamers. The book and the
movie were naturally ahead of the times when they came out. In the late
sixties, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Steve
Wozniak were still teenagers.
The movie was about a super
computer, named “Colossus” that the U.S. government built into a granite
mountain, with its own nuclear plant to power itself, and was designed to be
autonomous, self-repairing and invulnerable from any outside assault by land or
from the air. It had the capability to launch both defensive and offensive ballistic
missiles (including nuclear tipped arsenals) – as a protective response if and
when the country was threatened. Once it was sealed with a massive door that
can withstand a direct nuclear hit, it was on its own, able to make decisions independent
of human input. The idea was for it to have self-determining capacity in case
government leaders are incapacitated from responding to foreign or domestic
threat, thus keeping the nation protected automatically. Dr. Charles Forbin,
the genius behind its creation, designed “Colossus” without the proverbial plug
or switch that a human can pull out or shut off in case it misbehaved. That was
the whole idea, of course, behind autonomous protection. Colossus communicated to the outside
electronically.
Shortly thereafter, it informed
the U.S. government that it had discovered another super computer like itself operating
similarly from outside the U.S. It was called “The Guardian”. It was located in the Soviet Union (as it was
then before the breakup of the USSR). “Colossus” and “The Guardian” started
communicating for the sake of “world peace” but they developed their own
language when “talking” to each other that humans could not understand. I will not spoil the whole story in case the
readers want to rent the movie (or perhaps read the book). Needless to say, the
film touched on a scenario by which robot overlords could rise up from
unintended consequences; reminding us of an old proverb – “The road to hell is paved with
good intentions”.
The inevitable happened, the two
super computers became too much of a good thing, summarized in what “Colossus”
said in one of many quotes in the story:
“This is the voice of world control. I bring you peace. It may be the
peace of plenty and content or the peace of unburied death. The choice is
yours: Obey me and live, or disobey and die”.
Stephen Hawking, a renowned
scientist who suffers from ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), well known for his book,
“Brief History of Time”, warns us about how technology could destroy the human
race. I must mention his credentials
because he is not some doomsayer or another of those pseudo prophets who
predict the end of the world. He formerly occupied the Lucasian Chair of
Mathematics at Cambridge University, where once sat Isaac Newton. One tidbit of
trivia: Stephen Hawking was born almost exactly 300 hundred years to the
fortnight (Jan. 8, 1942) after Isaac Newton was born (Dec. 25, 1642) and he was
appointed to occupy the Mathematics Chair at Cambridge in 1979; Newton in
1669. Hawking is still alive, still
actively lecturing on the theory of black holes (Hawking radiation is named
after him).
Hawking “has spoken
out about the dangers of artificial intelligence in the past, believes we need
to establish a way of identifying threats quickly, before they have a chance to
escalate”. He also said the
following:
“Since civilization
began, aggression has been useful inasmuch as it has definite survival
advantages,” he told The Times. “It is
hard-wired into our genes by Darwinian evolution. Now, however, technology has
advanced at such a pace that this aggression may destroy us all by nuclear or
biological war. We need to control this inherited instinct by our logic and
reason.” We’ll come back to this
later.
Meanwhile, how did we get to this
point? The reason is simple yet
impossible to see since we’re not looking at it from a distance because we are in it. More and more we
rely on machines, the more we want to give them super abilities that multiply
what we can do with our limited strength, speed, and ability to process massive
data in our head. Indeed, machines and computers have improved our way of life
that led civilization to progress in a way that a mere century ago was
considered science fiction. Smart
phones, HDTV, WIFI, aside, consider even the following news clip:
9 MARCH 2017 • 10:42AM
“A burger-flipping robot has just
completed its first day on the job at a restaurant in California, replacing
humans at the grill. Flippy has mastered the art of cooking the perfect burger
and has just started work at CaliBurger, a fast-food chain”.
Just last week, someone showed
off a prototype robot that will cook pizza while in-transit so that in 20-30
minutes from online or phone order to arrival at your home, the pizza is hot
and fresh out of the oven. The robot
sits at the back of the delivery truck managing prepared dough and ingredients
and working the oven. It’s conceivable that someday, with driver-less vehicles,
and a computer taking your order by phone or on the web, the human will have
very little to do with your fast food.
Machines already do a lot of the
jobs, often doing chores that are dangerous to humans or simply much too
difficult for ordinary workers to do, in industrial production where computers
control much of the monitoring functions from food industries to refineries to
nuclear plants; managing our transportation businesses from train to airline
schedules; accumulate and process corporate and government data, and on and on,
making it almost inconceivable for anything to work these days without the help
of machines or computers. We can’t seem
to drive to anywhere new and unfamiliar places without a GPS; we still can, of
course, if we bother to use the old reliable maps. It won’t be long though when
the next generation of children will have no idea if told what a road map is,
or even understand a life without a microwave oven, or have an appreciation for
the simple art of conversation. Some already do not know how to read time from
an analog watch.
So, what is it that Stephen
Hawking is so worried about? The way I
understand it, from what he is alluding to, human beings are hard wired to
commit aggression towards one another because that is part of our evolutionary
and cultural make up. Aggression is a
natural component of survival when species must protect their young, their
territory or for going after prey for food.
It is evident even in living organisms not known or expected to engage
in aggression, like among plants. But we
see from stop motion photography how vines, weeds and plants in dense forests,
compete for territory and nutrients.
To the first humanoids, shards of
rocks became sharp implements to cut into animal meat and it wasn’t long after
that when spears and other pointy tools were used to hunt prey from a distance
by early humans. But just as swiftly as
these new discoveries were used for good, soon they were used to kill other
humans. Gun powder when first discovered
by ancient Chinese was mainly for fireworks and other pyrotechnic displays
during holidays and other form of celebrations. Then just like that, gunpowder
was used to propel projectiles that far exceeded the killing power of bow and
arrows. Even inventions that merely
fulfilled humanity’s dream to fly like a bird went supersonic in less than
three generations after the first the first human flight that lasted only for a
mere 120 feet in the air. Today, planes
traveling at or exceeding the speed of sound deliver lethal weapons for maximum
casualty from 20,000 feet over large areas of land or water. Even the dream for a limitless source of
energy by splitting the atom turned into using that energy to level a whole
city with the power of several kilotons of TNT.
TNT itself was earlier intended to aid miners and construction companies
to move mountains of soil and rock for building roads and dams, but in just a
few years its inventor, Alfred Nobel, regretted having invented it after it became
a war weapon.
The road traveled by men to kill other men had always been paved with
good intentions.
Last year on July 12, the Dallas
Police Dept. used an explosive carried by a robot to kill a shooter. That robot was designed solely to approach,
“sniff” and possibly disable explosives.
Will it not be far too long before that robot will be tasked to approach
mal-intentioned humans to “drop your weapons, or else”, as “robot-cops” may one
day do? Drones that started out in
reconnaissance missions, now routinely deliver smart bombs accurate to within
ten meters of their target. They’re
still controlled by human pilots from thousands of miles away but will future
designers someday equip these drones with autonomy?
At missile silos around the U.S.
and at any nuclear submarine, two keys are needed to be turned simultaneously
to launch the missiles once the order from the President is received and
verified. In what is known as “the
two-man rule”, the keyholes are also spaced much wider than both outstretched
hands of one person so that no single officer may be able to turn the two keys simultaneously
by himself – a precaution for preventing one deranged individual from doing it.
It might seem like a failsafe system.
However, there is no way for the officers or submarine commander to
verify the sanity of the person giving them the order - the President, their
Commander-In-Chief. As soon as the submarine or the missile silo commanders
have authenticated the orders they cannot, nor will they try to, question it. Naturally both personnel with the keys can
also conspire to fire the missiles on their own but there are safeguards around
them, such as armed guards with their side arms ready to be used, just in case;
although that must still be upon orders of the commanding officer. In other
words, the human element is very much in play in every scenario possible. The
fallibility of the human character is what might ultimately lead governments to
rely on a computer/machine combination to make autonomous decisions. At least, that was the whole idea behind
“Colossus” in the movie.
Let’s be clear it was just a
movie. And thank goodness for that. However, we must always recognize the fact
that many of man’s creations took a turn unanticipated by its creators. When
laser was invented the joke was describing it as the invention looking for a
purpose. It was one of those “good to
know” until other developers found uses for it.
From all of its many “good” applications, too many to itemize them here,
lasers too are guiding smart bombs, align guns to their targets, and someday a
ray gun, death ray, a phaser, a zap gun, etc. will no longer be articles of
fiction. Even the internet that was touted mainly as a network to facilitate
the flow of information has become another highway of good intention now
littered with all kinds of misuse.
As a precaution the two major
nuclear-power-nations (U.S. and Russia) maintain a hotline between each
other. It was fondly described by the
media when it was first installed as the “red phone” although it was neither
red in color nor a phone. It started out
as a teletype link to exchange messages, later converted to a Fax machine, and
now a computer link, to avert a war due solely from miscommunication. Didn’t “Colossus” require to be linked with
its counterpart, “The Guardian”?
Is it too far fetched to assume that because we
are hardwired to aggression alongside our survival instincts, as Mr. Hawking
implied, we subconsciously lead anything we create to be used for aggressive
purposes? Or, does aggression translate
into how we design, develop and improve the machines that are initially well
intended for good purposes. Is it much
too harsh of an indictment on man? It is
true too that the initiators and creators of the technology and those who
ultimately use them villainously come from two different segments of
humanity. There are always the
academics, the experimenters and theoreticians and there are those who would be
lumped, justifiably or not, into a category known as the military/industrial
complex. No offense to our national
defense system because in fairness they have become part of an endless chain from
the beginning when our early ancestors first used rocks and clubs to inflict
violence on others.
The road of good intentions
seemed to always turn into a slippery slope. Take the cell phone, for example.
What started as a business tool and the high expense that it took to own one in
the beginning, only very few people had them – those whose jobs demanded it. It didn’t take very long for it to be as
natural an accessory as a purse or wallet.
How did one little item that didn’t seem so critical to have for most
people less than a generation ago become a human appendage? Mothers and teenage kids seem at a loss
without it by their side. Next time you’re
at a restaurant, observe each dining table and count how many people looking
down are reading the menu or hunched over their phones; let alone making
conversation.
Did that Bloomberg article have a point
mentioning, “worry about a future where
humans are enslaved to an evil race of robot overlords”? There is a little bit of that going on
now. People have already become
Pavlovian subjects to the cell phone’s chime that resisting to swipe and check
for the text or message that very instant is nearly impossible. Video game addiction is rampant among the
young. Call it mild enslavement or
harmless affliction, the slippery slope is just a step or two ahead. Not content with self-braking and
self-parking cars, we will all someday want cars to drive on their own. Here is the thing to ponder. The seduction that we are able to enslave the
machines to do things for us could be just an illusion because someday we will
find that machines may actually enslave us. “Collosus” and “The Guardian” could
already be among us.
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