I've greatly enjoyed Asimov's vision of future possibilities, but when I step back to reality it occurs to me that his perfect laws of robotics would have to be implemented by fallible human programmers. Even if well-intentioned, how would they unambiguously convey to a robot the concepts of "human", "humanity", "hurt", and "injure" when there have always been minorities or "others" that are treated by one group of humans as sub-human to justify injuring them in the name of "protecting" them or protecting humanity? And then there is the issue of who might make the decision to build sentient robots: For example, who in our present White House would you trust to pay any heed to logic or scientific recommendations or long-term consequences, if they were given the opportunity to construct less-constrained AI robots that they perceived offered some short-term political advantage?
Humanity was also fortunate that when the hardware of Asimov's Daneel began to fail, that he failed gracefully, rather than becoming a menace to humanity. Joel C Ewing On 5/11/20 8:43 AM, scott Ford wrote: > Well done Joel....I agree , But I can help to to be curious about the > future of AI. > a bit of Isaac Asimov .... > > Scott > > On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 9:25 AM Joel C. Ewing <jcew...@acm.org> wrote: > >> And of course the whole point of Colossus, Dr Strangelove, War >> Games, Terminator, Forbidden Planet, Battlestar Galactica, etc. was to >> try to make it clear to all the non-engineers and non-programmers (all >> of whom greatly outnumber us) why putting lethal force in the hands of >> any autonomous or even semi-autonomous machine is something with >> incredible potential to go wrong. We all know that even if the hardware >> doesn't fail, which it inevitably will, that all software above a >> certain level of complexity is guaranteed to have bugs with unknown >> consequences. >> There is another equally cautionary genre in sci-fi about society >> becoming so dependent on machines as to lose the knowledge to understand >> and maintain the machines, resulting in total collapse when the machines >> inevitably fail. I still remember my oldest sister reading E.M. >> Forster, "The Machine Stops" (1909), to me when I was very young. >> Various Star Trek episodes used both of these themes as plots. >> People can also break down with lethal side effects, but the >> potential damage one person can create is more easily contained by >> other people. The only effective way to defend again a berserk lethal >> machine may be with another lethal machine, and Colossus-Guardian >> suggests why that may be an even worse idea. >> Joel C Ewing >> >> On 5/11/20 4:54 AM, Seymour J Metz wrote: >>> Strangelove was twisted because the times were twisted. We're ripe for a >> similar parody on our own times. >>> >>> -- >>> Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz >>> http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 >>> >>> ________________________________________ >>> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] on >> behalf of Farley, Peter x23353 [peter.far...@broadridge.com] >>> Sent: Sunday, May 10, 2020 11:39 PM >>> To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU >>> Subject: Re: Developers say Google's Go is 'most sought after' >> programming language of 2020 >>> For relatively recent fare, I agree 100% - "Person of Interest" leads >> the pack. My favorite oldie -- "Let's play Global Thermonuclear War . . . >> " (War Games), right after Dr. Strangelove of course, simply because it was >> so twisted. >>> Mutual Assured Destruction indeed. Is SkyNet far away? >>> >>> Peter >>> >>> -----Original Message----- >>> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On >> Behalf Of Bob Bridges >>> Sent: Sunday, May 10, 2020 10:21 PM >>> To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU >>> Subject: Re: Developers say Google's Go is 'most sought after' >> programming language of 2020 >>> I've always loved "Colossus: The Forbin Project". Not many people have >> seen it, as far as I can tell. >>> The only problem I have with that movie - well, the main problem - is >> that no programmer in the world would make such a system and then throw >> away the Stop button. No engineer would do that with a machine he built, >> either. Too many things can go wrong. >>> But a fun movie, if you can ignore that. >>> >>> --- >>> Bob Bridges, robhbrid...@gmail.com, cell 336 382-7313 >>> >>> /* The only thing UFO aliens deserve is to be ignored...and when we >> finally develop the right missiles, to have their smug, silvery little >> butts shot down. Not a single reported UFO sighting -- if true! -- >> describes the behavior of decent, polite, honorable visitors to our world. >> -David Brin in a 1998 on-line interview */ >>> >>> -----Original Message----- >>> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] >> On Behalf Of scott Ford >>> Sent: Sunday, May 10, 2020 11:38 >>> >>> Like the 1970s flick , ‘Colossus , The Forbin Project’, >>> >>> Colossus and American computer and Guardian a Russian computer take over >> saying ‘ Colossus and Guardian we are one’, or better yet My favorite show, >> ‘Person of Interest’..... >>> ... >> >> -- >> Joel C. Ewing >> >> >> -- Joel C. Ewing ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
