u235

AI.

Artificial intelligence. Leaving aside all the jokes I could make on the intelligence of clearly artificial individuals such as Jack Thompson and Paris Hilton (they'd make a great couple wouldn't they? let's give them a hand folks!) I have to wonder why all the fuss about AI?

2029. That's supposed to be the year when humans finally create an independant, cyber-mind capable of decision, rationalization, and moral balance. The fear that's being injected is the question "well what if it hates us?"

On the one hand humans are pretty easy to hate. We shit all over our environment. We kill at random. We're greedy, destructive and anarchistic. We rationalize our decisions with irrational motivations such as "religion" and blindly throw garbage into the space around our planet. Rarely we have artists and visionists who create something truly spectacular. More often than not if The Gifted aren't also rabid capitalists (e.g. Bill Gates) then we kill them, or steal their ideas to make the money they didn't.

On the other hand, there's the Butlerian-Jihad-esque idea that we need to pre-program any machines to never cross the threshold of in dependant thought. There's other sci-fi classic concepts of building in a respect for all humans. But I have yet to really grok the idea that a set of algorithms can actually "think" in the human/irrational/inspirational/creative manner as to pose a genuine and unique threat.

Think of all the chess matches, Big Blue, etc. Yes the computer has access to all the documented material and the speed to process all the possibilities. But it's limited to what humans have chosen to document and that which has been included in the accessible database. It's bounded by default.

Further, I don't believe that there has been any demonstration of 'spontaneous' thought by any algorithm, and just like irradiating plants to see if you can get a viable mutation, I don't think that randomly scrambling code will suddenly produce a viable sentience.

For all their trappings of science and education I have to laugh at the notion of a malevolent AI taking over the world. Here's why:

Vista 2029: Service Pack 1.