Are superintelligent machines a danger to humanity?
As usual, before one can begin such a discussion, we need to understand the terms we are using.
There are three terms in our question which need examination: superintelligent, machines, and danger.
Superintelligent: Intelligence is the ability to learn and to solve problems - not to be confused with
knowledge which is simply the regurgitation of facts. So superintelligence could be
taken to be a greatly superior ability to solve problems - or perhaps even to recognize
problems. What I mean by this is that you can hardly begin to solve a problem if you
don't even recognize that a problem exists. For example, how long was it after Newton's
law of gravity was published before humans recognized that it didn't fully explain some
observed phenomena (apart from simply bad observational data).
Machines: This may refer to individual androids or machines or groups of machines working
together. It seems likely that sooner or later the androids will utilize the internet to work together
to solve problems in the same way that thousands of PCs have been utilized to work on the
SETI problem. By use of the internet, androids will be able to share their discoveries and to
assign sub-problems to other androids or machines or groups of machines. Also by use of
the internet, what one android knows could be known by all within a few seconds assuming
they have sufficient memory space locally to hold the information.
Danger: Practically anything can pose "a danger" to individuals, but few things pose
"a danger" to humanity. Among these are such things as: nuclear war (1), a giant meteor
colliding with the Earth (4), AIDS (2), a pandemic of smallpox or anthrax (1), an
unknown new pathogen (2), global pollution (3), elimination of oxygen from the oceans
(4), other unknown super weapons (3), and so on. The numbers in parentheses indicate
my estimation of the threat level where each higher number indicates a threat level at least
10 times lower. The actual threat posed by a level one (1) "threat" is hard to estimate.
Many people believe that the Cuban missile crisis brought the world close to nuclear war.
I blame both sides for the Cuban missile crisis, but I doubt that the actual threat ever was
higher than perhaps 1 in 1000. I believe it is currently much less - perhaps 1 in 1,000,000.
A comparison of humans and androids
I think it is useful to compare the two "species" to help understand our primary question.
What are the basic needs, desires, and fears of humans vis-a-vis androids?
Need/ desire/ fear Human Android (or machine)
food yes no
water yes no
air yes yes (needed for pneumatics but not for breathing)
electricity no yes (critical need)
sex yes no
love yes no
sleep yes no
family yes no
friends yes no
pleasure yes perhaps (but its not clear what qualifies)
leisure yes no (androids will likely have lots of leisure time)
clothes yes perhaps (only for humans' benefit)
money yes yes (once they become autonomous)
power often perhaps (power over other androids or humans in their care)
sickness yes no
injury yes perhaps (they may be temporarily out of operation)
death yes no
Immediately you notice that androids (or machines) have few of the basic needs or desires
that humans have. Perhaps the most important is the fact that we humans eventually die
whereas the androids will not die. What a tremendous advantage they have - androids are
immortal.
Is superintelligence dangerous per se? (No)
It is not obvious that the behavior of a superintelligence can be
predicted with confidence. But will it be dangerous? It seems to me that the
evidence points to the contrary. The evidence is of course the
behavior of human geniuses. Take for example Isaac Newton, Albert
Einstein, or Stephen Hawking. Each of these men was (is) a genius
with raw intelligence far above the average human being. However,
none of these men became dangerous in any sense. I believe that
having very high intelligence generally means that you are able to solve
the problems which you face more easily than other people. We live
in a (mostly) civilized world. People learn very quickly that
simply trying to obtain what you want through crime is very unlikely to
be successful in the long run. And if you are superintelligent
you will be able to obtain what you want without having to resort to
criminal behavior or violence. I doubt that you could find any
person who is both a Nobel prize winner and a criminal.
Conversely, who are the really dangerous people?
They are generally dictators or tyrants in positions of great political
power who use their position to cause millions of people to
die. The obvious examples are people like Mao Zedong, Joseph
Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il, and Saddam Hussain.
They clearly did NOT use superintelligence to accomplish those horrors.
Today however, there are super weapons available (or on the drawing
board) which allow the possibility of much greater horrors. Namely
the killing of significant percentages of all people on Earth. The
most obvious example is nuclear war which is becoming more and more
likely with each additional (unstable) member of the nuclear club.
How will superintelligence arise in machines (or androids)?
It seems likely that the first person or group to accomplish this
will make a lot of money from it. Since this superintelligence
will be able to solve difficult problems (or easy ones), many people
will be willing to pay a lot of money for the solution to their
problems. Imagine aircraft companies who are looking for an
advanced engine which would allow them to fly at Mach 6 or Mach
10. How much would that answer be worth? I can assure
you it would be worth many millions. But perhaps it is
impossible. Perhaps there is no such engine. What about an underwater
breathing apparatus which would allow humans to roam freely on the ocean
bottom regardless of the depth of water? What about the perpetual
motion machine? It has been thought to be impossible for decades,
but is it really impossible? How many alien civilizations exist in
the universe? Where are they? How far away is the
closest one? What caused the big bang? Does God
exist? Clearly a superintelligence
could be extremely useful.
There are hundreds of researchers around the world who are working on
artificial intelligence. But, they have not yet produced a viable
superintelligence. There are a couple of tantalizing examples -
such as the Deep Blue chess program which beat world chess champion,
Gary Kasparov, in a 6 game match in the spring of 1997.. This chess program plays extremely high level
chess; however, it is really just a giant search routine. Deep
Blue searches over 200 million moves per second.. It evaluates each position and makes its choice of move
based on the evaluation algorithm set up by its authors. But it
this superintelligence? NO, clearly it isn't. A human grandmaster
evaluates fewer than 1000 positions in selecting his moves. Thus
it is clear that humans have a vastly superior search and evaluation
scheme than a brute force method which searches millions of positions.
Some people believe that speed alone will produce superintelligence. I do not. There are many other factors
which are required to produce superintelligence. For example,
you need an intimate knowledge of the subject matter related to the
problem you are trying to solve. You must be widely read and have
a true understanding of the problem. This is true because the solution
may hinge upon a fact or idea from a related but significantly different
field or even a totally different field. Often a key fact or idea is missing from the available
information. The real genius is able to think up this missing idea
or missing piece of the puzzle. This is perhaps the key area where speed
will be nearly useless. In order to create a superintelligence we must
understand the process of thinking up and generating new hypotheses.
But, how can we know if the answer we are searching for is
actually possible? What about the problem of interstellar
travel? The distance between galaxies is so tremendous that we currently
have no possible way to reach the closest spiral galaxy outside the
Milky Way (Andromeda which is 2.2 million light years away).
Do "worm-holes" actually exist? Can space be
folded as in the Dune novel? These are questions which humans have
struggled with for decades and have not solved. Perhaps no
solution exists.
Many years ago a lot of work in the field of AI was devoted to a General Problem Solver. There was a program written at MIT which
solved freshman calculus problems. But, solving calculus problems
is a relatively limited area and one which is unlikely to produce any
new inventions or innovations (what do I know).
I believe that Einstein's theory of relativity provides a good
example of how intelligence works. Before 1900 most people thought that
Newton's theory of gravity was correct. But, there were a few
things which Newton's theory did not account for. One of those was
the precession of the orbit of Mercury. This was a small
discrepancy and even today I could not explain it very well
myself. Suffice it to say that the rate of precession of the orbit
of Mercury could not be accounted for with Newtonian physics. There were also the so-called Lorentz transforms. The
Lorentz transforms which form the heart of Einstein's 1905 special
theory of relativity were previously deduced from very different
conceptual bases first by Voigt in 1887 and later by Lorentz.
Finally, there was the speed of light. When men first tried to
measure the speed of light, they discovered that it was so fast that
they could not measure it. Some thought it was
instantaneous. By 1880, the speed of light had been measured to
within 1% of it currently accepted value. Einstein is famous for
his "thought experiments". This I think is the key
to intelligence. How do you come up with "thought
experiments"? How do you gather together all of the above
information (and more) and come up with a new theory called "The
Theory of Relativity"? Why is the speed of light an upper
limit? Why can't you go twice the speed of light? It
will not be easy to build a superintelligence. One of my
favorite aphorisms is "all the easy stuff has already been
done".
When will superintelligence arise in machines (or androids)?
My prediction is within 10 years. As mentioned above there are
hundreds of researchers working on this problem all over the
world. Computers are getting more and more powerful which
allows search algorithms to explore more and more possibilities - and gives an apparent increase in intelligence. But currently nobody
seems to have the "real" solution. Or if they do, they are
not letting on to it. Researchers are lothe to reveal all their
secrets - and who can blame them, because the solution to this problem
is likely to be very valuable. They want to file patents or simply
keep the field to themselves for as long as possible. Why would
you give away a secret which will earn millions for you?
Conflicts arising between androids and humans
How could conflicts arise between androids and humans? The most obvious seems to be
the strong likelihood that androids will displace humans from their jobs. The result may be
attempts by some humans to destroy androids. Androids themselves may not be able to prevent
themselves from being damaged - but since they are immortal, they can be repaired and thus
resurrected. However, the androids' owners will not want their androids to be damaged since they
purchased the androids and they represent a significant investment. This may lead to a heightened
fear in some androids but probably not a significant problem for humans in general. But, since
androids have TV-eyes, they will undoubtedly record good pictures of the humans who tried to
destroy them. Therefore, those individuals will be prosecuted and will be removed from the threat
pool.
What about the androids' point of view. If the android is operational at all, that means
that his primary "needs" are being satisfied (air for pneumatics & electricity). It seems to me
that androids will not need family or friends as we do. In fact it appears that only if you assume
that androids develop feelings and emotions that you could suppose that they would have need
of friends or family or love.
Why then would one or more androids decide that they wanted to attack or otherwise cause
harm to humans? Clearly their primary needs for air and electricity are being provided by humans.
One would think that this would engender gratitude not enmity. As we have seen above, they have
very few needs. Perhaps we could list some human behaviors which might possibly be considered
dangerous (planet threatening) by androids or machines.
Dangerous human behaviors
1. Polluting the lakes, rivers, and oceans.
2. Polluting the air.
3. Polluting the land.
4. Overpopulating the world
5. Eliminating many entire species of animals.
6. Your favorite cause goes here.
We humans of course also recognize these behaviors as undesirable - and in many cases we are
trying to stop them. While it is obvious that eliminating humans will stop all of these behaviors, it
is not clear how some renegade androids would first, come to that conclusion and second, how they
might try to accomplish it. It would seem to me that there are many solutions to these problems which
are less drastic than eliminating humans. Furthermore, if androids or machines develop superintelligence
they should also be able to suggest other solutions, perhaps many other solutions. Since most
humans want the problems solved, it seems reasonable that if androids came up with better solutions
than humans have thought of, we would certainly give their solutions a try.
How would androids or machines try to eliminate humans?
It seems clear that simply trying to eliminate us one by one through some kind of combat would
be a poor plan since word would spread fast and we would simply pull the plug on them. Conversely,
it would appear to me that the most likely form of attack would be multiple pathogens. Since
androids are not vulnerable to such pathogens, they could come in contact with them without fear.
They could disseminate them widely and attack many population centers around the world at the
same time thereby infecting and killing millions or perhaps billions - perhaps everyone. Obviously
a human terrorist organization might come to the same conclusion and if they
have sufficient suicidal zealots available they may be able to accomplish
this horrendous goal. Let us hope they do not try.
Comments? Email me at crwillis@androidworld.com
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