On April 10th, Science Friday’s Ira Flatow engaged leading experts in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence in a segment called The Future of Artificial Intelligence. The informal discussion wasn’t on the latest and greatest but rather focused on what will become of humanity with the emergence of a super intelligence; how we will control and avoid destruction by an intelligence greater than ours.
Ira asked the researchers if they agree with the publicly expressed concern of Hawking, Musk and Bill Gates. The answer was yes. The idiom was invoked — the genie is already out of the bottle. What was meant is that the initiative, knowledge and energy to build superior thinking machines is a juggernaut and is barreling towards the emergence of a Von Neumann Singularity.
What the researchers and Ira on Friday, and elsewhere, have not emphasized is that we are already in a struggle to control a super-intelligence. The combined power of computers and humans integrated through the internet is creating all the challenges now that we imagine for the Singularity in the supposed near future. Also consider that these fears that we hold for the arrival of a super-intelligence goes even further back.
The concept of robot by Asimov and others has created an aura surrounding an artificial autonomous being with powers — physical or mental — that exceed human’s. But robots overshadow what has challenged humanity for much longer — mechanization and automated systems.
Taking an dissociated view of our situation, we are a collective intelligence for the machines and automated systems we employ. This intelligence serves to optimize its operation oft at the expense of humans. The most obvious push-backs from humanity come in the form of regulations, e.g. minimum wages or free time and controls to maintain healthy living conditions for humans.
The economy of mechanization, of robotics and of future super-intelligence has driven humans to build incredible wealth. However, without any need for a super-intelligence, mechanical devices and automated systems have also raised the bar of man’s inhumanity to man [ref].
The concern we have now is that a super-intelligence, not the present collective one but an autonomous one will either enslave humanity for whatever it believes is its purpose or eradicate humanity or all biological life. Again, the struggle is already at hand.
The super-intelligence we instill represents the latest chapter of the prelude to the Singularity. It is difficult to imagine that the present World Wide Web reflecting our present use and relation with technology will not stand separate and not have a direct influence on the emergence.
Recall the first images of child labor in sweatshops at the turn of the 20th century. Consider our near worship of the technology of Steve Jobs while at the same time Jobs and Apple, as one example, exported its manufacturing to Asia where the low-cost of human labor could make his mechanisms affordable for westerners. How optimization for profit takes precedence over our humanity for humans [man], is part in partial the risks of this prelude.
Humans are already subjugated by mechanization/automation which in the modern era now includes autonomous devices and ones with their own minds albeit not yet completely superior to ours. However, while the industrial revolution has staged much inhumanity to man and the internet has been exploited in inhumane ways, nearly everyone realizes the benefits of the industrial and internet era and for the most part are unwilling to go back. The genie is out of the bottle and has been for centuries.
The question of how we will develop artificial intelligence that is superior to our own which does not lead to our demise is the same question of how we should and should have been employing machines of the industrial era and the internet era to benefit rather than degrade or destroy humanity. We have avoided destroying ourselves outright but everything else is a mixed bag which in time or locations has tipped the scales poorly.
The super-intelligence represented in and through the internet is a summation of humanity magnified by computing machines. We would claim to have control of the internet and there are laws and regulations but the force of a billion minds multiplied by computers continues to overwhelm the controls. Its not unlike the investment and banking system in the western hemisphere that collapsed under the collective intelligence of all those investing, which was then more formally regulated then proceeded to be broken and fixed time and again.
This autonomous mind of the internet is a prelude to the Singularity. Where the future of our livelihood or even survival becomes clouded is when self-awareness of the internet or whatever system that becomes the Von Neumann Singularity chooses to override controls to suit what it considers a greater purpose. Today, the collective intelligence of the internet breaks and bypasses controls sometimes to our benefit and sometimes not. Today, the internet or its subsystems can be shut down, modified and restarted. If we want to have any chance of feeling safe with the emergence of the Singularity then we do need to determine a means of self-regulating and self-adaption of the Internet that, in summation, is always beneficial to Humanity.
The researchers in discussion with Ira mentioned briefly that the solution may lie in the application of Formal Methods which is a set of techniques using logic, mathematics and statistics to verify the operation of computing systems. The methods presently can raise our assurance that a system won’t break down somewhere along route 66 or on a trip to Mars but if Formal Methods are to safeguard Humanity, it will have to be merged with ethics and be integrated into the operation of the system before it achieves super-intelligence, self-awareness and independence.
Finding better solutions for governance — control and even self-control of the Internet — is a critical step towards assuring that once the genie is truly out of the bottle, that is, the Singularity is reached, its wishes will be compatible with ours.
Other recent stories by T.Reyes:
The Singularity can explain why we seem alone in the Universe
Ex Machina, Humanity’s Ultimate Blind Date
Will We First Find Simple or Intelligent Life beyond the Earth?
By Boots or Bots? How Shall We Explore?
How We’ve ‘Morphed’ From “Starry Night” to Planck’s View of the Cosmos
