Today I want to talk about Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) I will start with two visionary science fiction movies literally decades ahead of their time. Let us go back 56 years to 1967. Stanley Kubrick and Sir Arthur Clarke created a film classic "2001 A Space Odyssey." In one segment an advanced spacecraft with a crew of two astronauts is hurtling toward Jupiter. A very advanced HAL9000 computer is taking care of all while the astronauts sleep soundly. The computer awakens human astronauts prematurely. We come to realize that this machine has remarkable intelligence and learns quickly. It is almost human. The HAL9000 goes crazy and tries to murder the two astronauts. A lot of the movie that follows is a battle between humans and machine intelligence.
Let us now go back 53 years to 1970. A movie premiered titled
"Colossus: The Forban Project." For those of you curious, here is a
link to the movie on IMDB:
https://www.imdb.com/title/
This is one of my most beloved movies of all time. It is just as
relevant today as it was 53 years ago. The people who created and produced this
film were true visionaries. The film depicts a situation where the US creates a
supercomputer with human intelligence to manage its nuclear deterrent. The
machine learns quickly and starts to assert itself. As the story goes on, it
develops that the Soviet Union has also developed a supercomputer to manage its
nuclear deterrent. This machine has the same attributes as its US counterpart.
These two supercomputers come together to take over the world. When you
have some downtime, I strongly recommend that you watch this film.
Now let us fast forward to this morning. Elena and I have in
our household two mainframe computers, two laptops, two smartphones, an Apple
table, several internet televisions, and two electric cars including a Tesla
Model X. Sometimes Elena is in awe of these machines and even a little
intimidated by them. I give her these encouraging words:
"Don't worry dear, they are just dumb machines that do as
they are told to do."
We
also have another device in the house that Elena hates. It is Alexa from
Amazon. A black ball sits by the television in the living room. It looks
ominous. One speaks to the black ball. It can give you information on almost
any subject that you can imagine in the world except the current
temperature at the McMurdo research base in Antarctica. It can play almost any
music for you. It has the capability to manage your entire home including
turning lights on and off, setting the house temperature, turning
televisions on and off, finding TV programs and movies for you, opening,
and closing garage doors, etc. (We do not use this capability because we fear a
hacker taking over our house and hold us to ransom.) Alexa also has
the capacity to learn. She gets to know us well and even anticipates our next
moves. Like a human female, she has moods and even forgets things from time to
time. (Ladies I am not picking on you. We, males, have the
same problems and worse. It is just that Alexa was designed as a female.)
It is rumored that Alexa records all conversations within the house. Allegedly
Amazon got numerous protests about this feature and turned it off. It still
could be used by law enforcement agencies. In countries with
authoritarian governments, Alexa could be used to spy on political opponents
and dissidents.
Alexa is a big step forward in A.I. Elena despises it. When I am no longer
here, I am sure that she will dispose of "the ominous black ball"
rapidly.
Sunday night the news program 60 Minutes devoted almost 50% of the show
to Google and its efforts in Artificial Intelligence. The program talked
about their Bard A.I. system and a London-based company called New Mind. What
they have developed is stunning. For example, a machine can now write better
poems and prose than most human writers can. A machine can create
three-dimensional models of protein molecules that often take
scientists months or years to develop manually. These machines have
developed robotic soccer players who play as well as human players. Here is a
link to the program:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Please use some downtime to watch it. The CEO of Google and the
Vice-President in charge of A.I. swear that these advances will revolutionize
society. Human jobs will not go away, they will be changed and revolutionized.
There is a good aspect to this. All the Star Trek television series and movies
envisage a world where economic scarcity and inequality no longer exist. These
machines could create such a world. Perhaps a lot of humans would be able to
enjoy life with more leisure time and fulfillment.
In the alternative, we could see a world where machines take over as was
the case in the movie "Colossus: The Forbin Project." We should not stop
innovation. On the other hand, we must always be aware of a scenario where
"We let the genie out of the bottle and cannot put it back in." Some
incredible challenges and potential social unrest lay ahead for the world.
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