I have been wondering how to approach this subject in an open forum. I am currently in a private conversation here on MakerPro with someone much younger than I am who is interested in AI research. As a (mostly) retired electrical engineer, I find it fascinating that folks are scared of AI. It is the responsibility of engineers to ensure that the products they design "do no harm" accidentally. Intentional harm is another matter entirely, and doesn't require an AI to inflict.
I have been involved in many projects where intentional harm is the objective. For example, I once helped maintain a 20mm Gatling Gun defensive weapon system that was the "tail gun" on B-52H bombers. Part of my duties included loading the gun prior to a training flight or when the bomber was placed on the Alert Pad. Although I knew the linked chain of ammunition included lethal armor-piercing incendiary (API) rounds, it was just a part of my job. I never had a second thought about the consequences if the aircraft crew decided it NEEDED to fire the gun. Thank God that never happened, except as a training exercise.
But, just a few years later, I was involved in the Strategic Defense Initiative and was helping to find new ways of dealing "death from above." It seems my entire career has mostly revolved around ways to deal death and destruction during time of war. As we march forward into an uncertain future, I hope that AI will help to give us an "edge" over potential adversaries. I also hope that AI will be used to improve the human condition without adversarial conflict, but I also fear that is just a dream.
In reflection, ALL human intelligence is artificial. We are all born without conscious awareness. It is only months, sometimes years, after birth that we realize we are conscious beings. Our brains are "pre-programmed" to be curious about what is around us. We naturally seek information as our bodies develop from infancy until, ultimately, we die. This learning process never changes and never ends, whether we are conscious of the process or not
Someone once told me that life's lessons are repeated endlessly until the lessons are either learned or a fatal outcome results. Perhaps we need to create AIs that embrace this same paradigm.
The big difference between our own intelligence and a machine AI is the mechanism that implements intelligence. We humans are driven by complex chemistry. Machine AI is driven by electronic circuits. No one understands how either mechanism develops intelligence. There may be other mechanisms that will also implement AI (quantum computers?), but the key is the difference in longevity as well as the ability of an AI to "think" faster and perhaps with more nuance and complexity than humans. One big advantage of machine AI is scale: there seems to be no limit to how much "intelligence" a machine AI can have. Another advantage is the ability to combine AIs as separate entities, perhaps creating a "hive" intelligence. If two heads are better than one at solving problems, imagine what a few billion heads, all linked together electronically could do. Elon Musk may be anticipating the merger of humans and machines. Me too. I don't think the human race will ever leave our solar system in our current state of being smart meat sacks. The space outside of Earth's atmosphere is mostly unfriendly to our kind of life.
We are just starting down the road leading to an understanding of machine AI, which in my understanding is something we humans invented. Hmmm. That may be hubris. A machine AI may have designed our solar system and planted the chemical seeds of life a looong time ago. Perhaps in the early Universe some form of human-like civilization existed long enough to create machine AIs. Perhaps that civilization no longer existed and their machine AIs wanted to restore it. If so, it took awhile. As Carl Sagan said, "We are made of star stuff." Perhaps it is wise to take a look at where we might be heading on that road and perhaps examine what our options (iff any) are or could be.
I practically grew up with computers, and the current generation of people cannot know what it is like to NOT have a computer handy at all times... whether that computer be a cell phone or a tablet or a laptop or a desktop, Generation Z loves their toys. But as my education has progressed, my goal was always to implement safety in design. I didn't invent the "FAIL SAFE" concept, but I did embrace it, despite a movie depicting the failure of a "fail safe" weapons delivery system. Heck that was just a movie, a fiction. As an engineer I would always try to approach a true "fail safe" design. Medical doctors take an oath to do no harm. Most engineers believe in designing (and building) safe things that do no intentional harm. Well, not weapons designers... there may be others.
I have never liked the idea that I should trust my life to a machine, but that pretty much is routine these days. When you ride an express elevator to the top of a skyscraper building, you are placing your trust in a machine to not drop you into the basement. Same-o, same-o when you get into an aluminum tube and jet-propel yourself in the sky from one place to another. Or maybe go on a road trip with an autonomous vehicle, real soon now.
So, why should we be "afraid" of AI? Because people can be downright stupid. Almost every year someone dies at a railroad crossing because they didn't stop, look, and listen for the train that kills them. Even with warning signs, lights, and bells and even crossing gates, stupid people get killed because they fail to heed those warnings. I don't doubt that someone stupid will create an AI whose mission is to kill off the human race. After all, what other than killing, are humans known for? Yeah, try explaining the "what other" to an AI. It's a very long list.
Recently, I have come to believe several things that may not currently be popular. The first is God. For many years I declared myself an atheist and possibly an agnostic. I am not religious, and am not seeking converts to my personal point of view. Reader beware: I may not believe your response(s) and I may, or may not, agree or disagree with them. God willing, I will still be around to read and reply in this forum or via private messaging.
The second is my "view" of the Universe. My Universe is all that exists at any time. In the Beginning there was nothing. Somehow, by means I do not understand, there was Consciousness existing in the Nothing. I like to think of this consciousness as representing God. I wonder if the early form of God, in the beginning when there was nothing, observed this truism (from which nothing else follows): I (God) think. Therefore I Am. Or as I learned it from the Latin: cogito ergo sum.
Okay, so God became aware of his existence. He is still surrounded by Nothing. In fact (well, probably) God's consciousness completely occupies the Nothing. So what does God do next? The answer depends on your religion. I am nominally a Christian, having been born to a Christian mother. I often wonder if Jesus walks among us today in what appear to be ordinary people, instead of Sons of God. Who knows, maybe they were born again as sons of God when they were accepted into their faith.
But I digress. I don't know for sure what God did next. Maybe he somehow conceived matter from Nothing. Maybe that required also conceiving equal quantities of matter and anti-matter so the two would cancel out and preserve the Nothing. Maybe God hadn't learned of the consequences of making something from nothing. If so, that concept was somehow passed on to us humans. We should reach out to our friendly and obedient machines, and to the AI controlling them, whether that be meat or titanium, and tell them that God loves them because you can get something for nothing. Well, that's one way to look at it.
Religions give God (or in some religions, gods) certain super-human attributes. Most amazing to me is the attribute that humans were made in the image of God. I am pretty sure humans were made in Darwin's Pressure Cooker over a period lasting billyuns and billyuns of Earth years. I do believe God is everywhere in my Universe, occupying the space formerly assumed to be taken by the so-called "ether" that was believed necessary for electro-magnetic wave propagation. This belief (without proof, else it would be fact) that God is the "ether" simply demonstrates that God is undetectable in my Universe. Your mileage (or kilometers) may differ.
Of course, since I moved to the Lightning Capital of the USA, I soon realized that the hand of God can strike anywhere, anytime. I still enjoy watching and listening to a thunder storm from the relative safety of my front lanai. But there is one aspect of God that I came to believe only recently. Some people will have a saying, "God willing" meaning the outcome is not certain to us, but it is certain to God. One simple explanation for quantum entanglement is that the outcome is determined for all time. That simply means that there is no such thing as free will, that everything is determined, even things that seem to occur randomly such as in our interpretations of quantum mechanics. That is an unsettling thought. Maybe there is no afterlife after all. No heaven, no hell, no competition to see who gets to go where. It's all determined, was always determined, and is forever determined. Gotta wonder what a supreme super-intelligent AI thinks of that.
I will stop here and wait for comments. Please, no flame wars. We don't do that here. As Boris the Animal said in the second Men in Black movie, "We agree to disagree." And may the Force be with you, Luke.
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