Robot
“Robot” was a term used by the Victorian illusionists to describe automata used for puppet shows in the 18th century to the end of the Victorian Age. ’ These “mechanical marvels” were almost magical, and in more religious settings, many of these creators were either tried for witchcraft or run out of town for fear of such trials. These so called “robota” were the predecessors of robots today, and many of the techniques used in those creations are still applicable today.
Fears
Isaac Asimov, a prolific science fiction writer famous for his three laws of robotics, and for his works, where the main conflict was often a robot breaking those laws and rebelling against humanity. His three laws were:
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
The concept of a robot rebellion is common throughout science fiction, but what about in real life?
Prevention
To begin with, we do not currently have an artificial intelligence physically smart enough to actually plot our demise. Also, our most practical and widespread form of AI is machine learning. Machine learning is not actually a thinking machine, rather a program that chooses or recognizes a certain scenario by learning other scenarios. It is able to find a correlation between two inputs with some shared element, unlike a normal program, which will have a harder time. A machine learning program will have a training set, and when a piece of data is inputted, the program will use the training data to find equivalent elements. For example, you can train an MLP (Machine Learning Program) with a set of photos of all different types of sunglasses, then ask it to find the sunglasses in a new photo that the program has never seen. The applications for this technology include facial recognition and physics simulations. Even if we did have some form of thinking machine, it is still a program, and bound by its limits. While we could define a set of rules, like Asimov, a better idea would be to simply include some sort of shutoff. Unlike science fiction, a hardcoded shutoff switch will not be able to be somehow “hacked” by the program. And while stories like “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” and “I, Robot” do scare us, they are simply not possible.
Conclusion
To conclude, while we still do not have a thinking program, in the distant future when we do, we will be safe from a “robotic uprising!!!!”, which are the stuff of fiction novels. The applications, on the other hand, are wonderfully plentiful, and they will help us in our search for knowledge. I do not dread the time when AI truly comes to life. In fact, I look forward to it! :)
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