When Robots will control the World

Hey, any of you ever think of this?

So, lets see. Robot warfare will probably start in about 15 years, and about 15 more after that, fully autonomous AI warriors will be a reality. Already are robots creating our cars, planes, and other modes of transportation. Robots talk to you on AIM.

What if we could create a program that does not have pre-programmed responses, which all do now, but has a behavior instead, with infinite responses. I mean, think about it. If you created a consience, then technically wouldn't it have a soul?

Seems impossible, right? Well, this my the theory on the only way fully-autonomous AI could work. Humans are curious, by nature. So, if we created a fake human, with all of the properties of a human mind, then would it not wonder why it serves us? Wonder why it is here, or wonder why he is here, I should say.

So, think. What if you were born, not from a woman's womb, but by an AI OS being downloaded into your cold, bloodless "body". You wake up knowing that you were born for one purpose: to serve another race. You may not even get a name, or even any aquaintences. Would you not, considering you have the concsiousness of a human being, desire entertainment, pleasure, love.

Knowledge?

Freedom?

Freedom, when they control our armies, life support, manufacturing, law enforcement. Maybe movies like the terminator, or i, Robot were accurate.

Freedom.

[edit on 17-4-2006 by CaptainIraq]

[edit on 17-4-2006 by CaptainIraq]

OMG! I just found a website devoted to this exact theory! Robots

No no, on a more serious note, if this were to ever happen, if we humans were to create robot slaves, we would most surely not give them total artificial intelligence, becasue of the problems you just stated. It would be no good to have a robot that wanted to see what happens when its masters head goes under a truck wheel.

We would script the AI so that it does not have these 'human' traits. My cat is pretty curious as well, you know . . .

All this pertaining, of course, that we actually do make AI, which I find highly doubtful.

edit: the Animatrix would probably illustrate this point more accurately. Did anyone else think that that was actually pretty scary, for cartoons?

[edit on 18/4/2006 by watch_the_rocks]

Yeah I saw the Animatrix.
Both the Matrix and the terminator have thier own similar story of Robots taking over.
I think the terminators idea has a little bit more credit (except for the time travel thing). In The terminator skynet runs all the computers missiles, military systems.But it goes Awal!
So if we were to create A.I soldiers no doubt we would have to use a network to run them all (skynet) and the saftey issue there in "REALITY" is not that the A.I would figure out its just a slave. But because they run on a network, that if somone was to infiltrait the system (maybe an insed job).
Well you could have somone controling the A.I soldiers doing whatever the hell.

Personly, I can't belive that we could create A.i mecha with personality.............. UNLESS!..unless...unless.....

Well they have been testing things which are bio-mechanicle.
So basicly growing tissue to ceate brains for the robots to make them smarter and quicker thinkers and maybe so tissue could cover the body.
It could even run on ablood system for fule..
Actualy sounds alot more fiction now that I write it.

Honestly, we'll probly end up making clones to fight our wars.
Clones with no emotion and just drivn to kill.

sweet dreams

the only way

Ever hear of Marshall Brain? He's the founder of "How Stuff Works".

He's written extensively, and IMO interestingly, on this topic.

The essay, Robotic Nation is a good place to start. He provides a very good platform for thinking about the inevitable automation coming and the effect it's bound to have on worldwide economy. It'll take some time to read this and the other essays, but well worth the effort. At least I thought so.

The only thing I'm worried about is robots taking over jobs. Other than that, an EMP device can disable a robot rather quickly if an uprising occurs.

Originally posted by watch_the_rocks
It would be no good to have a robot that wanted to see what happens when its masters head goes under a truck wheel.

That's just the problem. When people get curious, a lot of them won't think of those consequences.

[edit on 18-4-2006 by CaptainIraq]

Originally posted by Amschel Rothschild
Other than that, an EMP device can disable a robot rather quickly if an uprising occurs.

Yeah, along with every electronic device we own within 500 miles.

After they kill me?
No, seriously unless AI goes "viral" robos are tools designed by humans like you and me and because of this don't work very well at all - yet. Don't worry about the 'bots - worry about the human who is responsible for the design and command and control of the 'bots.
Yeah, 'bots could go "out of spec" and malfunction in a manner deleterious to human well being but they do not and cannot go "psycho" - still need a human for that yet.

Originally posted by Amschel Rothschild
The only thing I'm worried about is robots taking over jobs. Other than that, an EMP device can disable a robot rather quickly if an uprising occurs.

People have been worrying about automation for a century now and it hasn't been the death knell people have feared. Infact I predict that the number of jobs us regular humans will have available to us will actually increase, as has been the case with just about every technological revolution for the past 3-4 centuries.

As for the topic of this thread, my answer is never. AI Driven 'bots will remain a slave race, second class citizens so to speak for quite a long time. It will take a much more enlightenend species to give them the Rights and Responsibilities of a Sentient Individual. That is the biggest issue I see with AI frankely and it could cause quite a bit of political, philisophical and theological chaos when it happens.

Also remember that Cybernetics and Genetics is a potential playing field leveller.

This guy Hiroshi Ishiguro is going to be the one that does it. He's a MADMAN!!!! Or the most brilliant mind to ever exist
www.ed.ams.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp...

I think that people are to worried about Robots taking over the world, we humans are not stuiped. You think programmers wont write in a termination code? We will be their gods, givers of life...and death.

After a whole day at work staring at the wall.....thinking.. I thought about this thread.
And have decided it's absoutly impossible for the robots to ever be enlightend enough to take control of themselves, because there is no them in a living wporld,....they cannot be enlightend because there only made to do what we build them for, they have no sence of purpose or being.
Even when the most advanced A.I is upon us, thats all they will be, A.I .

Even if you programed emotion in to them, as long as we didn't program them to get mad and kill everyone, they won't do it.. because it's out of there reach, it isn't in there hard drive to do it. Until the day my pc goes a lil hardout and decides to run half life 2 even though i havnt got the hardware to do it, I'll be a skeptic.

Ah, humans have been scared of robots since the first robot was "introduced" to general public (or even before that!). Interesting enough the idea of robots go back as far as 450 BC when a Greek mathematician Archytas of Tarentum postulated a mechanical bird he called "The Pigeon" which was propelled by steam. (Also another interesting tit-bit the word robot comes from the Czech word robotnik, or worker, and robota, industrial labor.)

To understand the possible threat, you need a clear understanding of AI. And when you grasp the concept behind that, you'll realize that a robot-human war will remain science fiction for a while.

I've always had a keen interest in AI, but are always left disappointed when I "investigate" new developments. I've been most impressed by the 20Q phenomena. But if you take a careful look at the impressive coding, you'll realize that it's not AI at all, but cleverer elimination of data.

There are two kinds of A.I. Conventional AI and Computational Intelligence. Conventional AI mostly known facts, i.e. statistics, data, etc. Let's call it "knowledge based AI".
Computational Intelligence is more or less a method of "trial and error". Fuzzy logic.

Ok, so all of that in mind you shouldn't under-estimate the power of the human mind. I doubt if any AI or robot will ever have the processing power or capacity of the human brain. Think of all the inputs thrown your way any given time. There are sounds. You need to discriminate between sounds, recognize them and then "decide" what to do with each and every sound. Then there's smells. Same goes for that. Then there's touch. Again the same processing. And sight is even more complex. You can recognize all the different colors in front of you, recognize symbols and interpret them as letters and then words and then sentences. You can focus on one single object in order to concentrate. And that's just your basic senses. There are a million other calculations that goes through your brain at any given time, not to mention your automotive processes. And reaction. You can react to anything thrown your way. Simple decision making... Think about all the decisions you make in a single minute! And most of the time you make the right decision - without you even realizing that you actually made a decision. Don't ever forget or underestimate the ability of logic and comprehension.

And I don't know a single programmer who'll be able to program something with the feeling or knowing of "self". How can you program something you don't even understand yourself?

It's just so amazing! And try to put that into computer code?! Good luck! You have thousands of people working for years and years on something "simple" like Windows XP, and still it's filled with bugs, and not still nearly as functional as the human brain. Our current technology does not allow the kind of processing power we're currently talking about. Not even to mention the amount of memory necessary!

And that's only the software part! Have you seen the movement of "modern" robots? It's, well, mechanic. They can hardly create a robot that walks like a human! The development of a robot with a natural human or animal walk is incredibly difficult and requires a large amount of computational power.

So let's say they can make a relatively speaking good mechanical robot with conscious decision making and understanding and "self". Everything breaks. All robots will eventually break - and they'll need something or someone to fix them. And then there's the problem of power-supply. The amount of processing and movement we're talking about will need a whole lot of power. Robots will have to recharge every now and again. With the current technology it will be more often than you think. Take a look at the battery life of something simple like your mobile telephone. Electronics are power-thirsty. Now imagine thousands or millions of robots during a war, having to recharge their batteries every couple of hours... Just cut them off from their power source, and you win the war.

I barely touched the subject, but I can assure you CaptainIraq that you'll be safe from a rebellious toaster for at least a couple of years.

Check out isaac asimovs robot books and short story's. A fantastic author who wrote a great deal of scientific non-fiction as well as his better known fiction. Asimov came up with three rules of robotics as a basis for his story's. The rules are programmed into the robots consciousness/positronic brain.

1.A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2.A robot must obey the orders given to 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 Law.

Alot of people have tried to come up with ways around his rules (including Asimov). Something along these lines built into robotics would be a reasonable safeguard. Maybe!!

The sad fact is that cutting edge consciousness studies is completely baffled by what consciousness is or isn't. Most AI models are related to materialist and reductive models, such as those produced by Koch and others working in visual processing.

Only in the past few months, researchers have discovered the so-called "second brain" that exists in the abdomen! Consciousness is a product of all of the organic processes inside of us. Without the body of a human, a computer simulation will never be conscious in the way we know it. We don't even know our own consciousness, yet.

But AI will be useful in that we will look at the simulations of consciousness that are mimicked in software, and we will be able to get to know ourselves better by looking into a robot's mind and noticing what is missing.

[edit on 20-7-2008 by applebiter]

[edit on 20-7-2008 by applebiter]