Researcher: ‘We Should Be Worried’ This Computer Thought a Turtle Was a Gun - Motherboard:
Self-driving cars, airport luggage scans, security cameras with facial recognition, and various medical devices all employ 'some' variation of AI ("Artificial Intelligence") systems, and more systems will do so in the future, as we become more "comfortable" with trusting our machines to do our thinking for us..
But neural networks are easy to fool, if you fiddle with the algorithms just a tiny bit. Or worse, if you don't!
Or worst, we don't have to "fiddle" anything. We just have to trust the humans who designed the systems to have thought of every possible situation, and have 'programed' the systems to know the exact best response to any foreseen situation.
What about the situations which haven't been "foreseen"?
One example might be the madman who ran a rented pickup-truck on a crowded sidewalk in NYC, killing or injuring dozens of people?
Gee, who could have foreseen that?
Oh, it's New York City ... all kinds of freaky stuff happens in that, one of the most crowded cities in the world (with the possible exception of, say, "Tokyo"). In a crowded rat-cage, anything can happen. And eventually, it will.
As the Mayor of NYC said, we can't put a policeman on every corner.
Even if they could post a cop on every corner, it's doubtful that they could have prevented either the tragedy in NYC. People are weird ... remember "Bump-Stock Vegas"?
What's the problem? "People are weird." Right, we got that.
What's the solution? Nobody knows.
Prince William said recently that the problem with this world is that there are too many people in it.
He may have a point, but what's the solution? Hitler had a solution; we didn't like it. Hitler died in a
Maltheusian Theory is that eventually the earth will be so over-populated that we will be unable to feed everyone. (Prince William must be channeling his inner Thomas R. Maltheus)
Eventually (stealing from the Science Fiction Literature premise of "If This Goes On ...") we'll end up like Schrödinger's cat ... locked up in this box called "Earth", we will be both alive and dead at the same time. There's nobody watching us from the 'outside' to know the difference; there's just us. You and Me.
Lebensraum:
Hitler saw this coming on a smaller scale (Germany in the 1930's). He began his conquest of Europe in order to provide "living room" (and resources) for the expansion of the German people. That ended up badly for him. (see above).But what can you expect? He was a madman and a visionary at the same time. His only solution was to kill the people he didn't like (minorities) and conquer everybody else. He came damn close to making his "final solution" work (for various definitions of "making it work"), and frankly it was only the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor which brought the Americans into WWII. If you cross your eyes and stare at a spinning bicycle wheel long enough, you might almost want to thank the Japanese for their contribution to World Peace!
Well ... perhaps not quite. But you get the gist of it.
More likely, you may be a reader of Robert Heinlein ("If This Goes On"), or perhaps the maniacal ramblings of Harry Turtledove's "alternate histories", where the question of "what if the Confederate army moved to Africa and started a New World Order" may be explored in excruciating detail. There are more than a couple of authors who imagine what our world might look like today if a powerful leader was able to impose his vision on the few of us who live lives of slavery and persecution.
No, it's not a pretty picture ... unless you're a member of the Chosen People.
Have I strayed from the subject?
Not really.
We may not live in the "Perfect World" envisioned by speculative fiction, and that's a blessing to "most of us".
Probably.
We may not like our national leaders, but so far they haven't been able to impose their ideals on the most of us to the advantage of a privileged few. (And yes, I'm aware that many people today who consider themselves "disadvantaged" will disagree with that statement.)
Getting back to the difference between a Turtle and a Gun ... oh, there was a point to be made; what was it?
Oh, right. I remember now.
When we begin to put our faith in technology, we begin to lose our humanity. A computer has no ethics. It's just a machine. We made it, we programmed it, and then we sit back and let the computer do all the work.
What could possibly go wrong?
For starters: a computer can't always tell the difference between a turtle and a gun.
I was a computer programmer for 30 years. I lived by the concept that "if anything can possibly go wrong ... it will".
People are fallible: they make mistakes, but sooner or later someone will say:
"Hey, what the heck ...?" And then some underpaid computer programmer will pull an all-nighter and fix the program. I know, I spend a lot of nights trying to debug a computer program that someone else wrote and had been doing things "wrong" for years, until someone happened to notice that their paycheck (for example) always ended with thirteen cents.
True story.
(Actually, I just made it up, but what the heck, it's my blog ... I can do that.)
People (well, most people) intuitively know the difference between a turtle and a gun. That's important, especially if a thug points a turtle at you and says "Your Money or Your Life!"
There's an old joke about the first passenger airplane which was run by a computer. Just after it took off with it's first load of passengers, it put the following message out on the Public Address System:
"Welcome to Artificial Airlines Inaugural Flight. This airplane has no pilot, no co-pilot ... the only employees are those who will shortly be serving your lunch. There are no humans involved in navigation or piloting this airplane. It is completely controlled by a computer, and there is absolutely NO possibility that anything will go wrong (click) go wrong (click) go wrong (click) go wrong (click) go wrong (click) ..."
Trust me on this one:
Never trust a computer to get your paycheck 'right'!
Oh ... sorry; too late.
No comments:
Post a Comment