The Dawn of the Planet of the Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning continues to progress and implementations of AI are continuing to ramp up. Recently Elon Musk issued some warnings about the implementation of AI. At MIT he said, “With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there's the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it's like, yeah, he's sure he can control the demon. Didn't work out.”

Vladimir Putin once said of the nation that is the leader in AI will be the, “The Ruler of the World.” Elon Musk seems to agree in a tweet, “China, Russia, soon all countries w strong computer science. Competition for AI superiority at national level most likely cause of WW3 imo.”

Is Skynet on the way? Will HAL take over and eliminate all threats to itself? Maybe it will not be as scary as all that or maybe we need to ensure we include something akin to Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics as part of all AI implementations and development. For once the genie is out of the bottle it is too late. Pandora’s box cannot be closed.

The Three Laws or Robotics

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

Should we worry? Possibly. Facebook researchers were teaching AI bots to communicate and they found that the AI developed their own language! The researchers were unable to decipher the language. They should have tried the Rosetta stone idea. That is have the AI communicate in their language and ours. That would help us decipher their language. It would be well worth the effort to see what they came up with. However, the researchers pulled the plug on the AIs. They could have been plotting our demise or a cure for cancer.