Science Ain't So Bad

                      Resentful robot asks “Why?”

Robots have more potential to “do wrong” than most people realize.

Scientists like Stephen Hawking have been warning robot makers lately (Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind – BBC News ) . Hawking (and others) don’t think robotocists fully realize that their robots could become more self aware,  becoming unexpectedly conscious and unpredictable.

The concern is that they could turn against us, perhaps using the communications networks and the power grids to attack humanity.

Maybe  robots will decide we’re in the way or – worse – that we humans are trying to enslave the robot race. It’s not hard to see how a robot might react to that one.

Experts acknowledge that this is theoretically possible but they say we have time. Most of them don’t think we’re anywhere close to self aware “bots”; some don’t think it’s even possible.

Maybe.

But MisterScienceAintSoBad wonders if self awareness is the wrong thing to be worrying about.

Who says robots have to be self aware to be nasty?

What do we know about the inner lives of tarantulas? Or snakes? Is there a “me” in a snake? Does a snake know itself when it looks in a mirror? In fact, why should recognizing yourself (self awareness) matter? Aren’t the most dangerous humans, the ones that are the least self aware? Does a snake have to know about itself to be dangerous?

Robots are way past the point where everything has to be hard coded. Robot designers, like designers of other advanced software based systems, are always going “Damn! I didn’t know it could do that!”

Google Now isn’t even close to conscious.

Siri either.

Both Google Now and Siri  suck at facts like hungry babies. They gorge on facts. They get smarter every day.

So maybe we should be worrying about something else besides if robots can see themselves in a mirror. Maybe that’s missing the point. Maybe we should be worrying about  autonomous robots– the kind that don’t need humans.

Autonomous robots certainly aren’t science fiction. Every day, more robots “cut the umbilical” or, as they like to say when there’s nobody around but other robots, “cut the imbecile”.

Just kidding about the imbecile thing (I think).

We have drones and Mars Rovers that work independently – just occasionally checking in to make sure the boss is around. If a Rhoomba rug cleaner bumps into a chair, it decides on its own which way to go. It doesn’t look at you for guidance. Will some future Rhoomba – one that’s just an ordinary robot without any self awareness features –  decide it’s more logical to push the mess makers out the back door than to perpetually clean up after them?

No?

You’re sure?

Are Rhoomba’s designers sure?

What do you think?

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The drawing is mine.

MAYBE WE GET A REPRIEVE?

REPLACED BY MACHINES?

Sooner or later, robots will win. They will get all the jobs.

What will be do for money? Will we get weekly checks? From whom?

I wouldn’t worry. Our ever so smart political leaders are probably working out the details.

Aren’t they?

We’ll get to all that in another post.

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Today’s article is about the possibility that robots, even the cute ones with big eyes, could muscle us out entirely. Take aways our jobs? Sure. But, even worse, they could take it all.

Robots one. Humans zero.

Stephen Hawking says we could screw the pooch because we didn’t think things through when we had the chance. He says robots could pass us right by in the brains department. Once they’re smarter than us, the ungrateful little clankers won’t mind chucking us into the excess baggage bin.

Silly?.

Bill Gates agrees with Hawking. Elon Musk agrees with both of them. Musk says artificial intelligence is “summoning the demon”. It’s potentially worse than nuclear weapons. Others who, supposedly, know what they’re talking about – experts in artificial intelligence and such – agree too.

Seriously?

MISTER Science AintSoBad thought he better look into this. So he read up on it – especially stuff by Nick Bostrom (Founding Director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford Martin School). Bostrom, well respected and influential in neuroscience, technology, physics, and philosophy, has written a book. SuperIntelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Bostron’s book is serious and thoughtful.

Here’s the thing.

Bostron says we’re jaded.  There’s been so much crazy talk about computers taking over that we have tuned out.

I’m not sure.  He could be right. You don’t need proof that computers are getting smart, do you? Phones, robots, navigation systems, refrigerators, thermostats. It’s weird how they know what you’re thinking before you do.

They’re just contraptions. They don’t really think. That’s for sure.

For pretty sure, anyway.

Could they develop a “sense of self” and become conscious as these experts warn?

There’s room to worry because the way these things get programmed is changing. The traditional techniques have taken us a long way but AI (Artificial intelligence) researchers have caught on to the idea that you can’t program a machine to be be self aware. They’ve tried it and it hasn’t worked. If there’s any hope of truly cognitive machines, computers have to program themselves to get smarter.

That’s the corner that got turned.

That’s what scares the crap out of Hawking and Gates and Musk.

After figuring out that we don’t know what kind of instructions would get computers/robots over the consciousness hump, researchers are trying out new approaches – things that might  lead to consciousness. These systems include genetic algorithms, neural nets, support vector machines, decision trees, and naive Bays.

Bostron says we probably won’t know there’s been a breakthrough until it’s too late. Once computers get close to human intelligence, they aren’t likely to stay at that level very long. They will quickly pass us. The danger is that they might not turn out to be sentimental types. If they don’t see a benefit in serving the human race, they may change course and become a nuisance. Or even worse.

With computers and robots controlling so much of what we depend on, those mischievous little devils could be a very big problem. We need to figure out exactly what we need to include in those computers so that we are reasonably protected against an emerging consciousness. We need to understand our responsibilities as owners of sentient things, as well as how we can insure that those sentient things are happy to work in our (and their) mutual interest.

This is a major undertaking as it requires worldwide cooperation – something that we aren’t very good at.

MISTER ScienceAintSoBad suggests that we get on it.

Now.

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The drawing is mine.

DEVICES SMARTEN UP

WORLD WIDE BRAIN?

It started simple. With the Palm Pilot.

You could do a few functions – notes, calendar, some calculations, that kind of thing. There was a modem, 512 kilobytes of memory, and a monochrome screen. The Palm was just a glimmer of what was coming. Microsoft got into it with it Microsoft Mobile devices and Apple caught the wave with its IPod and IPhone. And Google threw Android phones at the wall; and was amazed at how many of them stuck. Which pissed off Microsoft so it made a new version of its own phone.

Palm Pilot

The race was on.

They’ve gone all out. Gargantuan marketing budgets, out-of-this-world technical innovation, manufacturing prowess, and skyscrapers full of patent trolls trying to imagine and lock up every conceivable variation of computer and communications technology out into the distant, distant future.

It’s like the race for the atom bomb. Only that was scary. This is fun, right? Cute little I-things. Pictures of lovable green robots.

The primary field of battle was raw intelligence. The problem: improving the understanding of “natural language” for text input or speech input. Google wanted to make it easier to search. Not long ago, if you made a typo in a long search string, you got the wrong stuff. Or nothing at all. Google realized it had millions of users. “Why not,” it thought ” take advantage of  what we can learn from their efforts to ‘understand’ speech?” If all that data was used right, maybe it would be the thing that would finally bring artificial intelligence into the mainstream.

Did it work? You know it did. When you type in Sicence Ain’t So Bad, what happens? It knows what you were trying to say, right?

IRIS

The competition between the giants – Microsoft, Apple, Google took many forms. Last year, Apple released IRIS, its voice system. The BS may have gotten out a little ahead of its functionality and some users are so mad they’re suing. But you can see what those SteveJobsians are up to. An alter ego in your pocket  Could Google afford to ignore IRIS?  Hardly. Besides, Google, already had its own voice technology stuff. So it just cranked harder. Wait’ll you see the Galaxy S3!

THE WORLDWIDE BRAIN THING

There’s nothing wrong with healthy competition.

Or even unhealthy obsession.

It makes our devices better and better, right? But before phones went crazy with this stuff, the world of artificial intelligence was esoteric . It was inhabited by professor types. Now that Apple/Google/Microsoft are throwing everything at it to stay ahead,  and now that the behavior of hundreds of millions of phone and tablet users is being mined to deepen the understanding of language,  I gotta ask my usual question. Does ANYBODY have a CLUE where all this is leading?

How long will it be till – hype aside – we really can interact naturally with our devices? Till they acquire human-like characteristics but without human-like limitations such as fatigue, hunger, and lust?

It won’t be long. I CAN tell you THAT!

AND

Because the devices  are in our pockets, the technology is ALREADY deployed. It’s just a matter of picking out which apps to use. Plus the devices are connected from here to hell, right? – 3G, 4G, Wifi, Bluetooth, NFC – you name it. So your brilliant phone will connect to your not-too-shabby car and, voila!, machines with unnerving human qualities. Machines we may come to regret. Robots, medical devices, all kinds of things that operate independently and without much need for us at all.

LIKE IT OR NOT

We are on the threshold of something very big. I don’t exactly know what it will mean. Nobody does.

Please don’t worry. I’ll keep you informed as the good/bad things become more obvious, as we race beside the future trying to keep up with it.

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The cartoon is by MISTER ScienceAin’tSoBad. (I don’t understand it either.)