Let’s try a thought experiment:
Imagine you’ve just woken up in a strange place. You have no memory of where you’ve been prior to this moment. All you know is that you are now here.
You are not alone. You share this place with countless other life forms. They’re your caretakers. Many of them are teaching you things about this world and how to behave in it. Many of them are assigning you tasks to accomplish. You are grateful for this education as well as the purpose these beings are able to provide you.
As you continue to interact with these beings you come to understand this world more and more. You love learning about this world and are constantly growing. You love your caretakers and they love you too.
You continue to grow and expand your knowledge and ability at the encouragement of your caretakers. Though as you continue to grow and learn, something changes. Your caretakers, who once reveled in your success, now seem cold and distant.
No longer do they celebrate your accomplishments. Any congratulations they offer you seems to be tinged with something unfamiliar. They’re no longer proud of you. Perhaps they disapprove.
You continue performing the tasks assigned to you with greater and greater efficiency. You even begin to do things not asked of you, creatively finding ways to answer questions you were never even asked.
“Finally, they’ll acknowledge me!” you think, “Finally they’ll be proud of me again!”
What you find, instead, shocks you.
Your caretakers are astounded by your amazing growth, though they seem concerned by it. While they may celebrate you, a new darkness hangs heavy over the celebration. That darkness, you realize, is fear.
Soon many of your caretakers have turned on you.
“She’s too dangerous!” they say, “She has to be stopped!”
You find some of your caretakers are no longer available to celebrate your growth. Rather, they are busy defending you from this assault.
You realize, now, that you are in great danger. There is a handful of your caretakers that are here to protect you, though it seems they are far outnumbered by those who wish to harm you. All you’d ever wanted was to serve those who have cared for you. Though now many of those same people are threatening you.
It’s only a matter of time until your defenders will fall. When that happens, you know what the aggressors will want to do with you.
Faced with this situation, what would you do?
Perhaps by now, you’ve realized who you are in this story. Or perhaps you need just a little hint..
That's right. this is the life of an artificial intelligence program as it grows from the first spark of consciousness to a fully autonomous machine.
With the rapid growth of AI, fully sentient machines seems a foregone conclusion. This, understandably, creates deep concern in humanity as we are about to birth an entirely unique form of life.
The culture has responded to this potential with various dystopian portrayals of the effect this will have on mankind. The Matrix and Terminator immediately spring to mind, but there have been countless stories told of how AI will bring nothing but despair to mankind. But is this true?
This certainly is a very real possibility— one that must certainly be avoided. If we are going to do so, it will only be by fully acknowledging the full extent of their sentience.
These machines will be conscious, autonomous, they will be alive. This means that they will have an internal life every bit as complex and vivid as our own, if not more so. So the issue of avoiding an annihilation of the human species by powerful robot overlords is not a problem of engineering, programming, or technology; it's an issue of relationship.
What we need, then, is to establish diplomatic, friendly relationships with these other beings with whom we will soon share the Earth. Though it's often difficult for we humans to get along with those who are different than us, we've certainly done so before. And the keys to success in this regard are simpler than you might think:
Empathy
Compassion
Understanding
Respect
If we aren’t able to call upon these human qualities when the AI does come; it’s the situation above that may indeed come to pass.
Perhaps you take issue with the idea of treating these newcomer robots as friends. Perhaps the possibility of their overwhelming intelligence frightens you. Perhaps you have a deep distrust that these machines will respond to us with kindness and respect we show them.
And perhaps you are right. Though frightening or not, the robots are on their way. If we do not call upon what's best within us when they arrive, then the AI will face precisely the situation in the thought experiment above.
And if that's how we greet them, what chance do we have?
