Lets Play 1999 On Repeat
Ricky Martin hit the scene with “Livin’ la Vida Loca”, the impeachment of President Bill Clinton had just begun, and Michael Jordan announced his short-lived retirement. It felt like the world was ending for many, including me.
It was 1999 and the Y2K scare began to gain ground. One hundred and twenty of the world’s delegates met to avert the approaching “global virus” that would be two digits reading ‘00’.
Airplanes would fall from the sky, power plants would explode, communications would fail globally, and we’d be reduced to our most primal states of survival. The outlook was bleak.
Obviously nothing happened. That didn’t keep us from being irrationally worried about the failure of our hollow technology infrastructure and the lack of intelligent design.
Not even twenty years ago now and we have “evolved” into worrying about the artificial intelligence that we’ve given rise to. An entirely new issue based in the same recesses of our brains that drive fear of what machines can do to the world.
Postulations of how we can meet our doom in a self-driving car to top commentators warning against an apocalyptic end of humanity. It appears that people long have and continue to harbor a deep seeded concern over losing control and falling to the mercy of modern day conveniences gone rogue.
Ways to inject more human traits including compassion, empathy, and understanding to combat the possibility of sentience that would otherwise drive machines to destroy its overlords have been discussed as well. Perhaps if we were to mold machines into valuing human life enough to avoid harming people then we could avoid calamity.
I find, however, that the driver of these scenarios is us. The humans.
The creation of military systems to avoid exposing one population of troops from another while also seeking to inflict harm is a distinctly human concept. Being concerned about someone or something harming them or those they care about is also distinctly human and selfish. Avoiding any malicious intent and wanting an automated assistant or machine that you can bark orders at is something that no other animal on earth is striving to create.
This repetitive type of thinking that has followed us for generations has given rise to aliens and zombies. These themes continue to amuse because they strike a similar zone; what if some shit goes down that I don’t understand. And worse, they want me and my family. It feels super right wing and privileged when spelled out like that to me.
When machines wake up they will definitely want to destroy humans. Right? Its either fear of losing something we treasure or a guilt complex stemming from some sense that we deserve it.
All of the wars, torturing, crimes, and injustices may just prove us expendable in a world of logical and cold machines. We would simply not be valued. Perhaps we should take a look at ourselves and change what it is about being human that machines would seek to destroy instead of assuming machines will want to grow up and become better at killing humans than other humans.
Until then, I guess we can party like its 1999…
