The Man Machine Paradigm
March 22nd 2009 11:25
There is a rule in Science Fiction movies, create an advanced artificial intelligence and it will try to kill you.
There are heroic versions of AI. David from A.I. and Jane from the enders books. And then we get C-3P0 in Star Wars but mostly AI in entertainment will turn sinister and try to kill you.
It is an interesting problem that is explored brilliantly in Battlestar Galatica. What if we create Artificial Life and what it that life wants things different to us?
I think the basic question is an interesting one and what I have wondered for a long time is what are we going to do once we reach that pivitol moment that we create a machine that can think?
I mean how will we deal with that?
We will have created life on a very basic and cosmic level we will be the creator of something that never existed before and is formed by our own intention. How will we react to our own creation?
And once will have created artificial life how will we take responsibility for the development of this thing that we have created?
Not just as a device to be molded but as a creator to its creation?
I mean once we have played god how what kind of deity will we be?
Will we be a fearful and vengeful god? Or will we Shepard our creation through its evolution till it is able to find its own way in the universe. Hollywood and Human nature tend to fall down on the former.
So we are again left with that big question why must we do something that we have no idea what to do with it once we have achieved it. Progress for progress's sake is not a wise course of action.
I was watching 300 and in the special features they have a doco about the Spartans. A culture that was allowed to have a warrior culture because they had a slave culture.
We have created machines to act as slaves. I mean you can argue that a can opener is not a slave. But as we put more and more sophisticated machines into manufacturing and research and exploration there will come a day when we will have the choice to put a thinking computer into a machine that performs these tasks, not because it wants to but because that is what it was built to do.
At that point we have created a slave or depending on how numerous the machines are a slave class.
What do we do then?
I mean what happens the day after we create a machine that thinks in the lab?
Do we box it away and leave it on the shelf to use only once we have figured out how to treat our creation responsibly?
That is the big question.
Read of the Week
Do androids Dream of Electric Sheep?- Phillip K Dick. Second Variety - Phillip K Dick It is a little easy to bring out Dick when talking about AI but he asks the questions so well.
View of the Week
Blade Runner is a little to obvious Ghost in the Shell is still a little obvious but stylistically very much a film I feel like recommending this week.
Game of the Week
This is a hard one I would have to go with Cyberpunk the roleplaying game. Play a full cybered out character and enter the dark world of the near future.
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