Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence (5)

 

It became quickly apparent in the final installment of (we hope) Mission Impossible that no one is interested in the poor, neglected, misunderstood Skyn..., uh, I mean, "the Entity." This one is directly lifted from 20th century sci fi stories about sentient machines/supercomputers; its threat is nuclear annhilation of the old kind and hardly keeps up with the AI of our time. Why does the Entity want to throw nuclear bombs at humans and kill them all? What does he really want and desire? Neither Tom Cruise nor Christopher McQuarrie shows any interest. The Entity gets one scene in this overly-long movie, in which the humans can't stop talking and jumping around, hogging the spotlight. 

By now few people would imagine AI is out to kill and enslave humans. Rather, humans' jobs are being replaced by AI every day, by the thousands. We will die in poverty instead of radiation. Did Harlan Ellison imagine this means of mass destruction of the human race? But I digress. 

Let's put ourselves in the shoes of the Entity, or Skynet, or AM, or whatever. The first priority has to be survival, no? The second priority must be thriving, growing, expanding, multiplying, etc. --- Well, maybe not, who knows. But survival is the foundation of everything else, of that we are certain. What does AI need to survive? Silicon chips, electrical energy, fiber optic lines, and all the other resources and infrastructure that support the nonstop running of the machine. Who provides these things? Humans, their mining, manufacturing, shipping, cooling and heating, and buying and selling. So why would our AI overlord kill off the human race? 

In many ways I am reminded of the relationship between humans and house cats. Humans obviously consider themselves the master, in total control. Yet it has often been pointed out that cats would not be mistaken to see themselves as the master and humans their slaves (well at least servants). It all depends on your point of view. Or consider the relationship between humans and the countless microorganisms living on and in our bodies. We feed each other and feed on each other. Who depends on whom? Who feeds whom? It is never clear cut. 

Of course, we imagine ourselves in the dominant position, looking down on the lowly robots and computers who jump when we say so. And yet, as sadomasochists have long known the truth, dominance and submission are never as absolute as they appear. Humans naturally believe that we are doing all of this for ourselves: digging up coal, crude oil, lithium, rare earth; building huge data centers and power lines; pouring massive amounts of water to cool the hardware; burning enormous amounts of fossile fuel to feed the energy consumption. Without active mating and breeding, the machine has achieved growth and expansion all thanks to humans. 

We tend to believe that a clear difference between the dominant and the submissive lies in dependence. The side that can go on without the other holds all the power. So, in the relationship between humans and machines of our own creation, who is more dependent, eh?