Killing robots and other problems with A.I.

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by Zoe Romanowsky, 7/27/09, InsideCatholic.com Print This Page

The New York Times reports that computer scientists met privately in February in California to discuss whether limits should be placed on artificial intelligence development. The meeting was organized by Eric Horvitz, a Microsoft researcher who is now president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

The experts are concerned that further advances could "create profound social disruptions and even have dangerous consequences."

As examples, the scientists pointed to a number of technologies as diverse as experimental medical systems that interact with patients to simulate empathy, and computer worms and viruses that defy extermination and could thus be said to have reached a "cockroach" stage of machine intelligence.

While the computer scientists agreed that we are a long way from Hal, the computer that took over the spaceship in 2001: A Space Odyssey, they said there was legitimate concern that technological progress would transform the work force by destroying a widening range of jobs, as well as force humans to learn to live with machines that increasingly copy human behaviors.
The researchers discounted the likelihood that intelligence "might spring spontaneously from the Internet. But they agreed that robots that can kill autonomously are either already here or will be soon."

Did I read that right? Robots that kill autonomously are here or will be here soon?
"Something new has taken place in the past five to eight years," Dr. Horvitz said. "Technologists are replacing religion, and their ideas are resonating in some ways with the same idea of the Rapture." [snip]

Dr. Horvitz said the panel was looking for ways to guide research so that technology improved society rather than moved it toward a technological catastrophe. Some research might, for instance, be conducted in a high-security laboratory.

A report from the conference will be issued later this year.

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