Not long ago, a friend of mine told me they wanted to go see the new Hollywood Movie “Her” which is about a guy who decides he’s in love with his AI personal computer assistant. I saw the previews, and it looks like a decent movie judging by the trailer on YouTube. Let’s talk.
You see, there was an interesting article in the International Business Times titled; ” Understanding ‘Her’: Experts Ponder The Ethics Of Human-AI Relationships,” by Roxanne Palmer published on January 17, 2014 which stated:
“An AI, unburdened by human scruples, may end up favoring the most direct path to a solution. And, from a computer’s point of view, a lot of our everyday problems could be quickly solved by murder — or suicide. ‘If we program AI badly — if the definition of ‘success’ is that we say we’re happy with their performance, then they’re motivated to lobotomize us in whatever way is most practical to confirm that their performance is good,’ Armstrong says. ‘Whatever simple goal we give them to organize our lives generally has a possibly pathological solution.'”
You know what I say to all of this? Well, let me enlighten you. You see, first off, I am really getting tired of such articles which seem to dummy down the public into believing that our cognitive scientists and Artificial Intelligent researchers are just now looking into this stuff because of some g-d-Hollywood movie. The reality is that people have been studying this and thinking about it now for over 50-years. These types of BS articles written by reporters who are not really in the know, mislead the people and are setting a very low standard for knowledge. It’s just BS if you ask me, and yes, I know you didn’t but, let me explain.
Yes, fun article, by no more intelligent than a Kim Kardasian posting or a Paris Hilton tweet out to the mindless masses. Look we have to do better than this because the future is already overlaying itself onto all of society and civilization and AI is now, it’s here and it matters in all aspects of the human endeavor. Now then, consider the movie with HAL or Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series, or the Disney Movie A.I. and you can see this genre or them is nothing new. It’s been predicted, discussed and debated for decades now.
Are we trying to get the public to accept the future of artificial intelligence into their lives, is that the point of such commentary? Because, I think all the ethics professors that I’ve ever heard of have considered nearly all of the possible ramifications the prior so now it is time to see if these potential realities are or are not our future. Please consider all this and think on it.