There’s a memorable scene in John Carpenter‘s 1970’s sci-fi classic, “Dark Star” where an astronaut tries to use Cartesian Logic to defuse a nuclear bomb. The bomb is equipped with artificial intelligence and is programmed to detonate via a timer once its circuits have been activated. Due to a circuit malfunction, the bomb believes it has been triggered, even though it is still attached to the spaceship, and cannot be mechanically released. Refuting the arguments against its existence, the bomb responds in kind, and simply states: “I think, therefore I am.”
Dark Star’s Bomb 20: “I think, therefore I am…”
The notion of artificial intelligence both thrills us, and fills us with dread: on the one hand, AI can help us (by doing a lot of routine thinking and mundane processing); on the other, it can make us the subjects of its own ill-will (think of HAL 9000 in “2001: A Space Odyssey”, or “Robocop”, or “Terminator” or any similar dystopian sci-fi story).
The current trend for smarter data processing, fuelled by AI tools such as machine learning, semantic search, sentiment analysis and social graph models, is making a world of driverless cars, robo-advice, the Internet of Things and behaviour prediction a reality. But there are concerns that we will abnegate our decision-making (and ultimately, our individual moral responsibility) to computers; that more and more jobs will be lost to robots; and we will end up being dehumanized if we no longer have to think for ourselves. Worse still, if our human behaviours cease making sense to those very same computers that we have programmed to learn how to think for us, then our demise is pre-determined.
The irony is, that if AI becomes as smart as we might imagine, then we will impart to the robots a very human fallibility: namely, the tendency to over-analyse the data (rather than examine the actual evidence before us). As Brian Aldiss wrote in his 1960 short story, “The Sterile Millennia”, when robots get together:
“…they suffer from a trouble which sometimes afflicts human gatherings: a tendency to show off their logic at the expense of the object of the meeting.”
Long live logic, but longer still live common sense!
Next week: 101 #Startup Pitches – What have we learned?
Content in Context 
AI is coming weather we like it or not.
No disagreement there…. But like any new tech, it depends on how we use it. Here’s an intriguing (and frightening?) proposition – an AI “companion”: https://getasteria.com/?utm_source=BetaList
Rory. Great blog. Let’s hope that one thing we humans can continue to excel in is compassion and a presence of mind to know we are deluding ourselves.
Andrew – thanks for the feedback, and I totally agree with the need to retain our humanity (including a sense of our own mortality….). In reading Brain Aldiss short stories from the 1950s, I have experienced a weird sense of deja vu when thinking about the current debates on AI, automation and sustainability (such as in the story, “Who Can Replace a Man?”).