Don't Shoot -- I'm Human!

Are we catching up to the future, or is it the other way around?


As I explained last year, I am a guilty fan of the Terminator series, both the movies and the TV show. But what began back in the 1980's as a fanciful exploration of time and fate has turned into a warning sign on the entrance to the Twilight Zone. It remains to be seen if the series will be able to reach its final conclusion before reality has passed it by.

The premise of the movies is that in the near future we humans (let's be more specific: American humans) will turn over control of our weapons to an artificial intelligence system dubbed "Skynet." No doubt this will be done with the best of intentions, to insure our national security. However, due to a small flaw in its programming -- it is, after all, only version 1.0, and we all know what that means -- Skynet decides that humans are the enemy (an arguable assumption) and sets out to exterminate them all. Or rather, us all. It does this by using the nuclear weapons at its disposal to wipe out all the world's major cities, and then directing its fleet of walking, crawling, and flying intelligent robots to hunt down the survivors. Fun!

Our "salvation" from this fate depends on a few time travelers keeping young John Connor alive to lead the resistance and win the war against the machines. They had better hurry up, though, because the date of the big catastrophe is rapidly approaching -- 2018 is only 9 years away -- and by that time we may actually have a real Skynet on our hands. At any rate the intelligent warrior robots are already under construction, and moralists are hastening to catch up with ways to instill values and safeguards into their artificial minds.

Just as in the movies, this is being done with good intentions. The goal, believe it or not, is "saving lives," by which the military means killing the enemy without endangering any friendly personnel. This means fewer of Our Boys will have to stand up and be shot at. But the designers also claim to believe that robots will eventually be able to make better decisions under combat conditions than humans can. With no fear of their own destruction and no emotional clutter to get in their way, they will be able to coolly evaluate threats, identify friend from foe, and minimize what is blithely termed "collateral damage," such as destroying mosques or small children that happen to be in the way.

The intentions may be good, but anyone who has a feel for the current state of artificial intelligence must have serious qualms when they look at some of the weapons-bristling hardware rolling off the production lines. Stop for a moment and think about the last time you chatted with one of those creepy telephone robots that AT&T has planted as their first line of defense against their customers:

"Hello. How may I help you? ... You can say, Pay my bill, What is my balance, Start new service, Suspend my service ...."

"Um, I want to report some noise on the line. I'm getting like a clicking--"

"OK. I understand you want rate information. Is this correct? You can say Yes ..."

"No, I--"

"... or No."

"NO!"

"I'm sorry. I did not understand your response. Please say--"

I say, let's give this thing some guns and missiles and send it out to the front! Maybe the Afghan tribesmen can knock some sense into its head.

This is not to say I don't believe artificial intelligence is possible. On the contrary, I think it is now inevitable, and will someday surpass our own. A wonderful detail in the novel, The Accidental Time Machine, is the distant future in which the time traveler is told that science is still studied, but not by humans because it is far too complicated.

My complaint is that we are not there yet, but the military (whose own intelligence is a notorious oxymoron) is rushing onward anyway, damn the robots and full speed ahead. There has already been at least one "friendly fire" incident when a robotic antiaircraft battery opened up on some people -- who were not even flying at the time -- at an exhibit of weaponry in South Africa. You can imagine the programmers protesting that it was just a glitch and has already been fixed in the new release.

It would be much better to wait until we can have an intelligent discussion with these manufactured minds. Once we get to the point where they lecture us on the insanity of war, then maybe it will be safe to turn things over to them. Till then, we will all be nothing but potential targets. And if it comes to a war with the machines, as predicted in Terminator, I note that we have not invented time travel yet, so my money would be on the robots.

Links:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30810070/

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/05/army-terminators-walk-like-a-man/

Termination

I have a guilty pleasure: namely The Terminator, the series of movies--and now a TV series--that deals with time travelers trying to prevent the end of the world. Or to be precise, the end of human beings in the world.

In case you have been living in a convent for the past couple of decades, or for some other reason are not familiar with the plot, the gist of it is that humans in the very near future will invent an intelligent military computer called SkyNet which, with the aid of various robotic war machines, is intended to make the world safe from the scourge of war. Due to a tiny glitch, however--something that could probably have been fixed in version 2.0 of the software--the computer decides that humans are the enemy and sets out to destroy them all. Um, us all. It does this by launching the nuclear missiles it has been given control of and destroying all the cities in the world, and then using its fleet of flying, crawling, and walking machines to hunt down and exterminate the survivors.

So far, this is just another apocalyptic plot, but time travel provides an interesting twist. Somehow the remaining humans have got access to a time machine, and one of them goes back to the past to attempt to prevent SkyNet from being invented, thus saving the human race from the ultimate holocaust. The "Terminator" is a cyborg (hybrid robot and flesh) which is sent back by the machines to prevent the prevention, thus insuring that the machines will win. In addition, the machines want to eliminate a teenage boy named John Connor so that he will not live to lead the human resistance in the future, in which case the whole time travel thing would never have happened.

Starting with the first sequel to the original film, a further twist is introduced when the future humans manage to reprogram one of the robots so they can send it back to fight the other robot--thus preventing it from preventing the prevention--as well as to protect young John so he will still be there in the future. Convoluted enough for you? The rest of the action is just a series of chases, car crashes, shootouts, and superhuman wrestling matches as the forces of good and evil jockey for position.

What keeps the story compelling is that there is always the subtext about free will and destiny. Is the future bound to happen? If we foresee something, can we avoid it, or are we powerless to stop the course of history? And naturally, it is all about our relationship with the technology we have created, and whether it will--or already has--run out of control. Will technology destroy us, or will we at the last minute learn to reprogram it to save ourselves? Or instead, will the technology itself become "human" enough to be humane and to protect us from ourselves?

All of this was fun enough when it was only an intellectual exercise. Originally (the first film dates from 1984) the idea that "machines" would get so advanced in so short a time seemed incredible, even to an old sci-fi addict like me. Recently however, it has become known that our military is spending billions on developing "autonomous" weapons (read "robotic"). They are already being widely used in Iraq and elsewhere for surveillance and in dangerous roles like investigating possible roadside bombs. "Predator" remotely piloted aircraft are now armed with missiles which can be used to attack the targets they spot. So far it is still a human who pulls the trigger, but the military is actively seeking advances in artificial intelligence that would enable these machines to identify friend from foe and respond accordingly. (More info in this story from Scientific American.)

Not so funny anymore? I suspect it is only a matter of time before we learn of the first "friendly fire" casualties inflicted by a robotic agent. Of course, Pentagon spokesmen will be quick to apologize for the mishap, and will cite statistics about how much more reliable autonomous weapons are than humans, who are often known to make bad judgments in the heat of the moment. It will be small comfort to the victims to know that the bad judgment that affected them was made in the cool consideration of a manufactured intelligence instead. The result will be the same, and the ultimate responsibility will fall on those who decided to create the machines in the first place--all of us.

The original Terminator and former body builder, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was destroyed in the first film where he was the bad robot, then returned in the second and third ones where he was the good robot. Now Governor of California, the evil Republican who was swept into office by the "get rid of Gray Davis" campaign is now showing a human side and working for things like universal health care. So maybe there is hope after all.

But just in case, perhaps we should put the brakes on this whole robotic weapons thing now, before we need a time machine to correct our mistakes. Nor are robots the only things we need to fear. I refer you to the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, where they are trying hard to foresee what's coming and to develop a moral awareness of the consequences.

At the very least, I think we should wait until artificial intelligence is advanced enough for us to have a discussion with it about the morality of warfare. I can see this manufactured being (perhaps looking like the one called Sonny in the film I, Robot) listening carefully as we try to explain its proposed role in a place like Iraq. Then it would turn its head to one side, look at us, and say, "You want me to do what? Are you crazy?"

Then we'll know we're all right.