Canaries are Dying?! Quick, someone tell Stonedahl!! Warning Signs of the AI Robot Apocalypse

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Let’s pretend that society is a coal miner. On its quest to fulfill Santa’s order for 10,000,000,000 pounds of coal (A lot of students were bad and forgot to put comments in their maze robot code), our coal miner (society) travels deeper into the mine. Fortunately for our coal miner, he is accompanied by his beautiful pet canary whose song fills the air with joyous chirps in an otherwise dark, damp, and dirty mineshaft. All of a sudden, his canary’s song turns into a cacophonous medley of daffy duck noises and before long the bird is dead. Cause of death: super-intelligent robots.
Much like the coal miners of the 20th century who used to bring canaries into the mines to serve as carbon monoxide indicators, today, people studying AI have similar fears as to what threats will emerge as we continue to develop smarter robots and algorithms. In an article published in the MIT Technology Review, “How to know if artificial intelligence is about to destroy civilization”, Oren Etzioni dives into many of the milestones that might indicate an impending Robot Apocalypse.

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In the article, Etzioni refers to AI as baby penguins, “To say that machines learn is like saying that baby penguins know how to fish. The reality is, adult penguins swim, capture fish, digest it, regurgitate into their beaks, and place morsels into their children’s mouths. AI is likewise being spoon-fed by human scientists and engineers.” I thought this quote was fantastic, as it illustrates quite clearly how much human work is behind the development and implementation of artificial intelligence, and how unable AI is to be able to solve problems that have not first been formatted, digested and regurgitated into small bits by humans. This is where his first indicator for dangerous, super-intelligent robots is introduced: the ability of to not only take in nourishment, but also swim, hunt, chew, and digest. As soon as robots are able to identify problems, gather raw data, and make sense of incomplete data without any outside human involvement, they are 1 step closer to taking over the world.
The next canary that Etzioni talks about is self-driving cars. The argument here is that driving is such a dynamic activity in which your surroundings are always changing and it requires a human-like level of versatility and instinct. As of right now, robots cannot perform this task as well as humans, but as soon as they can, it is only a matter of time before they are able to perform a variety of other tasks previously thought to be unique to humans.
This brings us into another theme: the versatility of AI. For the most part, Artificial intelligence applications are very specific and limited and rarely can be applied to or carried over to other problems without extensive adaptations performed by human engineers. Etzioni refers to AIs as “idiot savants,” which I think is a fair description. In order for AI to surpass humans as the superior beings on earth, they will have to develop versatility like humans. For example, take the maze solver we made and imagine that instead of right angle turns, we introduce curved edges. Our robot would have no idea what to do and would probably get quite angry at us if robots could get angry. (Instead, to display its discontent it would probably revert to the red text bump-sensor warning that pops up in the console that is the universal sign for “I will punch you in the face” in robot culture). I don’t know about you, but I would be worried if Google Maps could not only navigate roads, but also flirt with my girlfriend. Imagine if he could not only find a path to Walgreens, but also a path into my girl’s heart…

                Although Etzioni and myself have the opinion that AI being an extinction-level threat is pretty far off at the moment, others feel like AI (facial recognition in particular) is an immediate threat to humanity and freedom. The company “Clearview AI”’s app has recently been banned by apple because of how unregulated the field of facial recognition technology is. To learn more about how skeptical people are about accepting AI technologies, read these articles:
The EU’s agenda to regulate AI does little to rein in facial recognition
Apple suspends controversial facial recognition app Clearview AI from its developer program

Comments

  1. nguyentruong17March 1, 2020 at 4:27 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. nguyentruong17May 10, 2020 at 12:10 AM

      I get your point but what about the Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics that we discussed in class? Is there any way to write our code, which is essentially the brain of they robots, to adhere to the above rules?

      Delete
  2. Anh NguyenMay 7, 2020 at 9:59 AM

    Interesting remarks about Google Maps you have there. Regarding people trust in AI, do you think it's more the manufacturer that we don't trust, because of all the security breach and data misuse?

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    Replies
    1. Thomas AyeleMay 19, 2020 at 1:18 AM

      I think our trust in the manufacturer is a significant thing. Like Johnathan said, we put trust in AI and i think our generation trusts AI more than they do human, which in the AI world are manufacturers. However, this might differ based on your perspective. But I think yeah because of security breach and data misuse are some of the reasons we find it to trust the manufacturer.

      Delete
  3. OmidMay 10, 2020 at 11:41 AM

    I agree with you that it's hard to see AI gain ability to change from thing that it was trained to something new. For example, it hard to see AI that was taught how to play baseball, becoming professional in basketball. The AI has it's limits and until it overcomes those limits, we are safe from them taking over the world. However, that doesn't stop other humans from using AI intelligence in wrong way. Like with facial recognition.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Olivia HMay 10, 2020 at 8:24 PM

    As much as I agree that there is skepticism surrounding AI, I think as it grows it will be integrated into our society whether we like it or not. Thinking about historical examples, loom weaving was one of the first examples of technology replacing human workers, and although there was outrage at the time, I doubt anyone today is upset about mechanical looms. Convenience eventually trumps skepticism and I believe that years down the line the number of people who are upset about facial recognition software we turn into those against mechanical looms once the technology becomes old news and is central to everyday life.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AnonymousMay 22, 2020 at 10:43 AM

      I would have to agree with you there. Technology is just growing so fast that skepticism will not be able to outweigh technology. Already people were upset about facial recognition, but now it's almost a standard on the phones as a lock type.

      Delete

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