Will People Please Stop Scaremongering On AI?

 

I’m getting tired of reading articles on the topic of the threat that Artificial Intelligence (AI) poses to the World in general, and Civilization in particular. Not that the idea of computer technology getting so out of hand that it results in either a dystopian future, or even annihilation, is anything new – I remember when Colossus: The Forbin Project was all the rage, in 1970. Even before that, Harlan Ellison published the short story I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream, in 1967, about a post-apocalyptic future of a handful of people who are still alive after a supercomputer (naturally) has nuked the entire planet. These people’s lives are intensely horrendous (it is Harlan Ellison, after all). I could go on (and often do), but GTIM Nation sees my point: so much of the raw speculations predictions from so-called experts focusses in on the potentially horrific repercussions of AI playing a larger and larger role in everyday commerce and social goings-on that it’s enough to induce building a fallout shelter in the back yard, and I’m not keen on doing that.

But let’s take a step back, and look at this monster more carefully, shall we? There remains essentially only two ways that a machine can “learn,” to wit:

1. By simulating decisions or strategies in a virtual environment, and noting which are successful within that environment, basically a derivative of Game Theory, and
2. By sorting through and/or filtering data (usually a large amount of it) in order to tease out some sort of pattern.

That’s it, dear readers. That’s all AI per se can actually do.

“But what about Collossus? What about the Allied Mastercomputer, the villain of I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream?” I can hear members of GTIM Nation (well, the older ones, anyway) demand. Actually, these two AI super-villains fall into Category #1 above, in that they are machines that were programmed to respond to events and parameters in a macro-conflict involving nuclear-armed nations, ended up becoming self-aware (exactly how this occurs is not disclosed), and then started launching nuclear weapons. Wait, what? You read that right – some genius not only programmed these machines to recommend a course of action in the event in a war, but gave them the power of actually launching nuclear weapons! Since such decisions are nominally made by nations’ leaders, and only under extraordinary circumstances, the villainy here simply has to be the decision to give a machine that kind of option, not the machine itself. If I program my lawnmower to cut foliage in a certain area, but don’t do a good enough job as to prevent it from wiping out my neighbor’s petunias, that’s on me, not the machine (in such an event, perhaps my neighbor could write a short story entitled “I Have No Petunias, And I Must Scream”).

Also, I don’t want to dash past this whole machines-attaining-self-awareness business. In order for a computer to perform at all, it must have two working components, the hardware and the software. Hardware is useless without software, and vice versa – hence the anxiety over an Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) event, which would blank the instructions for all the microchip-containing devices within its radius. It follows, then, that if we’re going to try to reverse engineer how in the world a given computer attains sentience, we have to look first at its software. What is software? It’s a series of instructions.

That’s it.

A series of instructions has no more ability to spontaneously attain self-awareness simply because it’s loaded onto a computer than a hand-written list you leave for your house sitter when you go away for a vacation. Can these instructions lead to mistakes and chaos? Absolutely. If you are unclear on which feeding schedule is intended for the dogs as opposed to the fish, you may find very confused pets upon your return from holiday. But that’s still a far cry from such lists attaining sentience. Now, some AI-based movies will make an allusion to this unavoidable circumstance, but even here their attempts are kind of dopey. For example, in the movie Short Circuit (1985), the protagonist robot, “Number Five,” attains self-awareness after being struck by lightning. I have written many executable lines of code, and I can attest, with 100% certainty, that any medium containing my debugged and compiled code would absolutely not be improved by being subjected to a lightning strike, much less improved to the point of attaining self-awareness the next time it ran. So, unless one is prepared to argue that hardware is miraculously improved for having been struck by lightning, it means that software is somehow thus vastly improved, which is analogous to your house-sitter instructions, printed out sequentially on a sheet of paper, being spontaneously upgraded for having been hit by lightning. I understand it’s simply a movie device, but you see my point.

As for machine learning technique #2 above, I’ll have to save that for next week. Suffice to say, this treatment will in no way allay my AI skepticism.