Machines challenging humans?
Will machines ever develop intelligence on a level that could challenge humans? While this remains a contentious question, one thing is certain: computing power is set to increase dramatically in coming decades. Moore's Law, which states that processing power will double every 18 months, is set to continue for at least the next ten years, and quantum computers, though poorly understood at present, promise to add new tools to AI that may bypass some of the restrictions in conventional computing.
What was once the realm of science fiction has mutated into serious debate. While the focus is currently on cloning and genetic engineering, few people have seriously considered being annihilated by a robot race.
That is until an article published in Wired magazine early last year titled 'Why the future doesn't need us', by cofounder of Sun Microsystems and esteemed technologist Bill Joy, introduced a wider audience to the possibility that recent technological advances could be a threat to the existence of man. Joy discussed the potential catastrophes that could result from tinkering with genetics, nanotechnology and artificially-intelligent machines.
Most disturbingly, Joy cites not technophobes or paranoid theorists, but some of the leading lights of AI research and academia who have voiced concern that machines might confront humans.
Steve Grand, artificial intelligence researcher and author of Creation: Life and how to make it, says it would be impossible for humans to be totally sure that autonomous, intelligent machines would not threaten humans. Perhaps more worryingly, he claims it would be futile to try to build Asimov's laws into a robot.
Artificial intelligence researchers have long since abandoned hope of applying simplistic laws to protect humans from robots. Grand says that for real intelligence to develop, machines must have a degree of independence and be able to weigh up contradictions for themselves, breaking one rule to preserve another, which would not fit with Asimov's laws. He believes that conventional evolutionary pressures would determine whether machines become a threat to humans. They will only become dangerous if they are competing for survival, in terms of resources for example, and can match human's intellectual evolutionary prowess.
"Whether they are a threat rests on whether they are going to be smarter than us," he says. "The way I see it, we're just adding a couple more species."
In his book The End of the World: The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction John Leslie, professor of philosophy at Guelph University in Canada, predicts ways in which intelligent machines might cause the extinction of mankind. He says that super-clever machines might argue to themselves that they are superior to humans. They might eventually be put in charge of managing resources and decide that the most efficient course of action is for humans to be removed. He also believes it would be possible for machines to override in-built safeguards.
"If you have a very intelligent system it could unprogram itself," he says. "We have to be careful about getting into a situation where they take over against our will or with our blessing."
Even if there exists a distant danger, some experts say it is much too soon to start panicking. Rodney Brooks, director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) says we can't hope to accurately imagine how things may pan out just yet. "I think that this is a little like worrying about noise abatement issues at airports back during mankind's first attempts at a hot air balloon," he says.
