Technologies Approaching From All Sides
What do our senses tell us? Should we be wary? Should we be aware? Should we really take notice of technology encroaching into our lives?
How far will this reach? Is this something we should trust without thought? Should we just throw open our arms and allow it in? Will it start off slow? What names will they give it? Will it be friend or foe?
A companion for us, constantly watching our every move, it will monitor us, it will read us, it will study us. Artificial intelligence or AI, is beginning to sneak in through the back door.
People may welcome it and say it helps, it keeps an eye on them, it keeps them safe, it takes care of them, it takes the worry out of life.
For some, this may be true and whilst AI is programmed, the code is written by a human being, there is a chance that there is no underhanded, no nefarious intent.
But what happens when AI becomes self-reliant; it learns to write the next line, it learns to write its own code, it learns to watch us? Our strengths and our weaknesses would and will be exposed in the blink of an eye, a nanosecond.
What will AI see the human being as? Why will it need us, other than to serve us? What safety mechanisms will be in place? What parameters will shield us from it? How will we know what it is thinking?
The Terminator was someone’s conceptualisation, someone’s thoughts, of what could be in the future. Farfetched, yes, plausible, maybe not. But that’s what they said about the 1960s Star Trek series; a flip up communicator, where one person could communicate with another, without two cups and a string, without copper wires and today we have smart phones, that are small powerful computers. That was 50+ years ago.
Moore’s Law, the state at which computational power grows, was set at 18 months. Today, Moore’s Law is obsolete. Computational power grows much faster. So, if you take a simple calculation, it took 50 years to get from a fantasy communication device, make believe, if you will, to the smart phones we now take for granted every day. If you then consider how computational power now grows and extract Moore’s Law, what once took 50 years to do, can now take 10 years today.
So will we see Terminator Machines in place of soldiers, in the next 10 to 15 years? Will we see robot companions, manufactured and programmed to be our friends, or companions, our guardians, our maids?
Will the past become the future and if it does,
where will we belong in it?