The dark side of artificial intelligence

I have brushed on artificial intelligence in two posts before, part whimsy and part possibility, but Sunday night on the 60 Minutes show I found out we are well on the way to a world of artificially intelligent robots and androids. For those of you who are around 30 years-old, your brain may be able to live on forever in an android. All of your knowledge and the world’s knowledge in one entity. I saw Charlie Rose interview an android that was as near to being a living woman as I could imagine except for the fact that they had yet to put legs on her. The robot builders are even teaching the machines to note and learn human expressions, much faster than we humans can detect them. They will know if you lie to them or you are angry with them or if you are a threat to them. So it all sounds good, eh? What could possibly go wrong?

Well now, let’s think about that. These artificially intelligent robots will be stronger than humans. Smarter than humans because once developed they can learn thousands of times faster and never forget anything and have the logic of humans. No one in the scientific world knows what these robots will do when they are capable of doing anything and everything they choose to do. They could decide to make the world a better place than we humans have made it. They could decide to eliminate humanity and just create a planet of nothing but robots. They could decide to go to war with other robots. They could design superior weapons and destroy the planet. They could become a race of aristocrats who enslave humans to do their bidding.

We could well be on our way to the land of Pogo, the Okefenokee swamp, where the famous cartoonist Walt Kelly once said, We have met the enemy and he is us. It won’t happen in my lifetime, but for you Millennials, beware the nice android with its hand out in friendship. Its other hand may have a weapon or a nice pair of handcuffs for you. It may not be like the 1951 movie The Day the Earth Stood Still where Klaatu the humanoid comes to earth with his robot Gort to try to save the earth from itself.

Just my writing this to warn you may cost me my life at the hands of dark, evil forces that are afoot in this world, forces just waiting for mankind to finish developing the humanoids so the dark side may take over.