Photo: Stephen Bowler from wakefield, United Kingdom
We look at videos of robotic dogs and make jokes about Skynet, Terminators and the Apocalypse, after which we shut down our computer and go to bed as if nothing’s happened. Or is about to happen.
That’s only because things aren’t there yet, but we can’t emphasize the "yet" hard enough. The field of artificial intelligence is expanding rapidly, and with the immense computing power of modern chips, we’re on a steady course towards robots that can do a lot of things on their own, rendering the human component as futile as resisting the Borg.
The funny thing is that the automotive industry is definitely lending a hand here, focusing so much lately on the autonomous driving technology that, basically, it means turning out cars into robotic drivers. Just because you don’t see a puppet on the driver’s seat like in the original Blade Runner film, it doesn’t mean that’s not exactly what’s going on.
Should we really be worried about this? Well, it depends. We’re still some time away from robots becoming self-conscious (we don’t even know for sure whether that’s possible), and we’d like to assume that there will always be a kill-switch that can be activated whenever things go wrong. So, no, we most likely won’t be needing a John Connor type of character.
But the rise of the robots, as non-self-conscious as they are, does pose a threat. Ever since technology evolved, people have begun to lose their jobs. That’s OK, you’ll say, nobody wants to spend their lives on an assembly line doing the same thing over and over again, day after day. Right, but fewer job opportunities and an increase in global population can only mean one thing: higher unemployment rates. And that, in turn, leads to social unrest, which can very easily degenerate into something nasty. So while we won’t be hiding in shelters from machine gun-wielding metal humanoids, the robots could have a serious indirect impact on our society’s future.
The self-driving cars seem to be the first things that will employ advanced AI, meaning that the first to suffer from this Technological Revolution will be those who operate vehicles for a living. Well, taking into consideration there are still a few years until driverless cars become the norm, and that they will continue to require the presence of a human driver inside for a while after, nobody should be looking for a new job just yet. Nonetheless, the problems raised by ethicists and computer engineers concerning the rapid and largely uncontrolled evolution of the artificial intelligence remain.
There’s this question that’s been around for nearly as long as serious talk about autonomous cars that asks "what will (or should) a self-driving car do in the situation where it has to choose between running over a child or hitting a tree and killing its passengers?" The unanimous agreement is that there is no right answer, because there is no right choice. It’s a conundrum that would have people split as well, with some reacting one way and others the exact opposite.
One thing everybody agrees on is that artificial intelligence research should spend some of its money on studying the ethical, legal and social implications of the technology as well. Wendell Wallach, an ethicist with Yale, told arstechnica, "We need to intervene in concerted ways to shape emerging technology to prevent it from becoming a dangerous master."
The funny thing is that the automotive industry is definitely lending a hand here, focusing so much lately on the autonomous driving technology that, basically, it means turning out cars into robotic drivers. Just because you don’t see a puppet on the driver’s seat like in the original Blade Runner film, it doesn’t mean that’s not exactly what’s going on.
Should we really be worried about this? Well, it depends. We’re still some time away from robots becoming self-conscious (we don’t even know for sure whether that’s possible), and we’d like to assume that there will always be a kill-switch that can be activated whenever things go wrong. So, no, we most likely won’t be needing a John Connor type of character.
But the rise of the robots, as non-self-conscious as they are, does pose a threat. Ever since technology evolved, people have begun to lose their jobs. That’s OK, you’ll say, nobody wants to spend their lives on an assembly line doing the same thing over and over again, day after day. Right, but fewer job opportunities and an increase in global population can only mean one thing: higher unemployment rates. And that, in turn, leads to social unrest, which can very easily degenerate into something nasty. So while we won’t be hiding in shelters from machine gun-wielding metal humanoids, the robots could have a serious indirect impact on our society’s future.
The self-driving cars seem to be the first things that will employ advanced AI, meaning that the first to suffer from this Technological Revolution will be those who operate vehicles for a living. Well, taking into consideration there are still a few years until driverless cars become the norm, and that they will continue to require the presence of a human driver inside for a while after, nobody should be looking for a new job just yet. Nonetheless, the problems raised by ethicists and computer engineers concerning the rapid and largely uncontrolled evolution of the artificial intelligence remain.
There’s this question that’s been around for nearly as long as serious talk about autonomous cars that asks "what will (or should) a self-driving car do in the situation where it has to choose between running over a child or hitting a tree and killing its passengers?" The unanimous agreement is that there is no right answer, because there is no right choice. It’s a conundrum that would have people split as well, with some reacting one way and others the exact opposite.
One thing everybody agrees on is that artificial intelligence research should spend some of its money on studying the ethical, legal and social implications of the technology as well. Wendell Wallach, an ethicist with Yale, told arstechnica, "We need to intervene in concerted ways to shape emerging technology to prevent it from becoming a dangerous master."
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