Outsmarted by Technology

Technology is evolving at a rapid pace. Computers came along an extended our ability to interact with information, and then with each other through the Internet. Smartphones came along and increased the connectivity even further, while also increasing the use of technology to replace common tasks we use our brain for. We don't memorize phone numbers anymore.

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We don't really use our memory for a lot of things when we can simply "google" up the answer we want. Technology is used to make us smarted by using it, but in some ways it makes us dumber by being depended on technology to do things for us. We don't develop our own abilities.

Is technology outsmarting us? Is technology going to be intelligent on it's own with the development of a true artificial intelligence that is conscious and has consciousness? What does that mean for humans and humanity?

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AI takeover? Killer robots? It looks like the sci-fi predictions from the past (about our current 2nd decade of the 21st century) are not panning out... Pick a sci-fi story from the mid 19th century and see that many predictions were being made for the fabled year 2000 and shortly thereafter. The AIs, robots, moon base that many envisioned back in the mid and late 20th century, is still a dream, not a reality.

These ideas, the idealized good along with the fears, have been portrayed in movies and other fiction alike. Machines that out think us in terms of calculation speeds have been around for decades. Now they are beginning to excel at facial recognition and driving us around, possibly doing thing better than we can. Enter the age of automation and AI.

One semi-AI (not really an AI) that many people have heard of is IBM's Deep Blue computer program that took on Garry Kasparov at chess. Kasparov won in 1996, but Deep Blue won on the rematch in 1997. This is what Deep Blue looks like:

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IBM also made the Watson artificial intelligence system which took on Jeopardy contestants in 2011 and won the first-place prize of $1,000,000.

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Similar to Deep Blue, another computer program, AlphaGo, was developed for the game Go, and was the first to beat a professional human Go player.

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On Steemit, we have seen some bot posts that have "AI" generated content. It might pass off as human, but not compete with the best writers humanity has to offer.

Programmers are getting better and developing smarter programs to compete with human non-linear intuitive computational skills and creativity. AlphaGo apparently used "intuition" and "creativity", according to it's co-founder Demis Hassabis. It played a move that departed from established methodologies that people have used in the game for centuries. It was unexpected, and it won. This might be a form of computational creativity.

If creativity, painting, and other abilities can be mimicked, what about imagination, emotion and consciousness itself? Programmers are working on this as well, but it can be a distant future before it actually gets done, if at all. We have yet to understand how our own consciousness emerges, let alone create one ourselves from scratch.

The decision making process of a program is not simply neutral. The programmer has biases, and these can be translated into the functionality of the program. The program is only as good as the programmer.

Whatever the abilities that surpass our own, programs need to be developed with certain rules in mind, and possibly a "kill switch" in case things go out of control. If all they want to do is make us happy, maybe they would inject pharmaceuticals in all our food, or cut up our brains to make us happy all the time. Goals or rules like morality, need to be hard coded.

Letting a program pick its own objectives can potentially result in disaster. If a programmer lets go, and the program takes over it's own reigns and further development, then the programmer better be sure he envisioned all future scenarios and covered his bases because there might not be a debug feature where you can go correct a mistake, update or run a new version.

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For now, the prospect of disaster or being saved by an AI, are remote. What is more likely is a type of automaton programmed zombie, an artificial general intelligence, not a true intelligence. An AGI resembles human behavior and responses, some functionality, but has no consciousness. If we are ever able to figure out how our own consciouses emerges and is created, then we might be able to create a consciousness that is artificial.

When that becomes a reality, we should be careful about what we are doing to our own fate, destiny or future. A Westworld or Matrix scenario could develop. Governments and corporations like to have control of information. Information is knowledge, and knowledge is power. The information war has been ongoing for a long time in human history in efforts to control people.

An AI that is not constructed morally can end up reigning over the information super highway (Internet) and control who has access to what, even remove information by getting into (up-until-then) secure systems. That would be a large nail in our proverbial coffins as a free people with access to information.

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Thank you for your time and attention. I appreciate the knowledge reaching more people. Peace.

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