Computers, Kids and my Fear of the Future
I am thoroughly disturbed. I just finished browsing through the technology magazine section of my local Barnes & Noble. A common theme ran through most of the magazine articles that I found rather unnerving.
“Can we trust robots? New models that will talk, act and look like humans…why experts are worried.” in Popular Mechanics.
“The mind readers – Scientists who can pluck images from your head” and “Cyborg Spy-Bugs! Terrifying Science or Innocent research?” in Popular Science.
“Robots – real-life androids that fight wars and save lives” in How it Works.
I realize that these are not peer-reviewed scientific publications, but the information in these magazines does reflect the state of current technology research. This, to me, makes reading about computers that can hack into our minds, remote control robots the size of an ant, and artificial intelligence that can mimic human thought, rather creepy.
The funny thing is that I run a company that promotes the use of computers in everyday engineering research. I have seen it time and time again; a computer simulation of an experiment can give more accurate and more insightful results then a nut-and-bolt lab experiment, and can be done faster and cheaper.
Yet, every time I read one of these articles, I feel like I am contributing to the destruction of humanity by smarter, faster, more adaptable machine creatures. I’ve seen the movies. Computers become self-aware, realize how much more powerful they are then humans, the Terminators come out, human bodies end up being used for power generation in the pods controlled by the Matrix, human race is destroyed and the only “human” thing that survives is the robot boy “David” on the bottom of the ocean (from Steven Spielberg’s A.I.).
I am a mom of two great boys, and more than anything I wish for them to grow up to be happy. At the rate at which technology is progressing, it will not be surprising if they live in the world completely controlled by computers by the time they are in their 40s and 50s. How can any human be happy living in a world owned by technology?
There are plenty of people who are completely thrilled about the new developments in technology and science research. My husband actually thinks that it’s cool that one day humans, piece-by-piece will be replaced by robotic counterparts until we can no longer be considered the same species.
Working in computer modeling field, I can see that progression of advanced technologies is completely natural. It’s the next step after the industrial revolution. I have read enough science fiction to know that much of the written fiction eventually turns itself into reality. Eight years ago Tom Cruise was manipulating images and bits of information while looking for criminals in a Minority Report and today, just eight years later, the iPad is available to the general public. For all we know, the freaky spider-bots scanning your retinas to confirm your identity might only be only years away.
Don’t know about you, but I feel like technology is rushing into our lives at a speed that I cannot quite digest. My thirteen year-old son’s main mode of communication is via cell phone texting. I used to think that texting might prevent him from developing real friendships because he’d be missing out on “reality.” Ironically, I found that texting actually keeps him connected with an incredible number of people, which would have been impossible to do without this technology. We have traveled a lot in the past two years, and my son managed to meet a number of kids at various US states. While ten years ago these brief acquaintances would have quickly fizzled away, today he manages to stay in touch with almost everyone he’s met.
During his typical day he communicates with people spread out through all four US time zones! We’re talking about a thirteen-year old here, not a high-powered CEO. Whenever we go to visit a state that we previously lived in or visited, he has plenty of instant friends –it’s like he never left. Technology gave him the power to stay in touch with a lot more people, at a very young age, and it’s fascinating and scary to me at the same time.
This generation of teenagers is already rapidly evolving. As opposed to having access to a few friends that they see everyday, they are connected electronically to tens, even hundreds of people through texting, facebook and internet video games. How much longer until that electronic connection is built directly into our bodies eventually evolving into a sci-fi collective consciousness?
Perhaps, like some of you, I am facing a dilemma – do I stop contributing to research that is speeding up the encroaching technological future, or do I simply accept it as my kids’ future and brush aside the fears and reservations I have about technology taking over humanity?
After thinking about it for sometime, I decided that there is no stopping the future. It will come, whether or not I try to get in its way. But I still want to protect my kids from whatever evils it might bring along. The problem is that I don’t know what those future evils might look like, or if my kids would even have the same definition of “evil.”
How do we protect our children against the unknown? I think that the frequently used “Knowledge is power” quote is the key. The best tool that we can give our kids to face the future, whatever it may look like, is knowledge. Knowledge about how the new science and technologies are being created, how they work, how to put them together and take them back apart. We are all contributing to the future, in whatever shape it may come. Giving our children the knowledge about how we are creating that future is the best we can do.
What do you think? Please comment…
Masha
Tags: computers, kids, popular mechanics, popular science, robots, technology
Hi Masha,
Information as generated by humans is expanding at an exponential rate. By analogy, if you toss an aerodynamically drag-free vessel out of an aircraft at 13,000 meters up, it will accelerate at 9.81 meters per second per second. This is not a bad comparison to what is occurring in the world today with the expansion of information. Knowledge arrives from a synthesis of present information, and becomes itself is more “information” feeding the expanding mass.
You are measuring that falling vessel’s velocity at the the 9000 meter mark, and you are worried about the speed. Using your measurement and making plans to reverse or freeze that speed in the future is not worth considering from a parental point of view, any more than attempting to hang a parachute on that plunging drag-free vessel.
Mothers always want to protect their boys and girls. It’s in a mother’s DNA. Otherwise, the children do not get to puberty, and the offspring of the unprotective mother (and her uncaring DNA) do not continue through the centuries. But protection from the future, the larger world, is out of our hands. What did the mothers of Hiroshima know, or -any- mother in the world know, in 1939, about what could happen to their children in August 1945?
An interesting post Masha. There are 2 important principles that spring to my mind:
(1) Teaching our children balance and moderation in all things
(2) Make sure they control the technology, not the other way around
Take mobile devices, for instance, a blackberry. If you went in a time machine back to the 1960’s and showed someone one of those they would not believe you and think it was Science Fiction. Just because we have access to such technology, we need to ask ourselves if/how/when we should use it e.g. do we REALLY need to be in connected to the web 24/7? All those inside The Matrix were connected 24/7, but to an illusion….
Masha,
1. I think that Ray Kurzweil has thought about the issues you raise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Kurzweil
2. Popular Mechanics has been predicting cars that can be morphed into airplanes for over sixty years.
Here are some quotes:
Dan Quayle: “The future will be better tomorrow.”
Yogi Berra: “The future ain’t what it used to be.”
Niels Bohr: “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”
Alan Kay: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
Alan Kay, in my mind, is a hero unknown to many people:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay
Keith
Part of what makes us different from other animals is our ability to adapt very quickly and evolve by using elements of our surroundings in novel ways.
If we don’t embrace our creations, we are denying what makes us human.
Ultimately, it is the form, or pattern of organization of matter - the essence of our self awareness and consciousness - that really matters. This is illustrated by the fact that none of the same exact cells (except for some neural tissue) are the same cells that composed our bodies just a few years earlier, yet, we call ourselves the same people. Physically, we are not; we are merely the same pattern of organization of matter, the same template. Therefore, if your same consciousness is maintained, what does it matter if your hip joint is composed of titanium? What does it matter if you augment your memory of telephone numbers to an outside device such as a cell phone? What does it matter if you replace your entire body piece by piece with longer lasting, stronger and more superior parts, as long as your self awareness is maintained?
So it is in the future, we may no longer be carbon based, we may no longer be hindered by the limitations of the sequential order of Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA). We will break free, for the first time in the history of evolution of life on earth. This will be a paradigm shift in evolution of life, similar to when life figured out how to use DNA to code for proteins by stringing amino acids together. This will move the essence of life to a new level, an existence based on self awareness, intelligence and real love for the universe.
Who is to say that a life force composed of silicon based chips, plasma, or neutrinos, will be less able to love and appreciate the universe? In fact, by incorporating other elements and substances into our bodies, other than relying on only 20 amino acids and 5 nucleic acid bases, we will be able to expand our intelligence and influence to a level that we cannot comprehend with our current limited biology bound brains.
It is only through this natural progression that we will be able to continue to evolve and nurture what makes us human…
Bill Joy from Sun has written a lot on this, much of it disturbing. One observation that might make you feel better is that computers have no ambition. They don’t want to take over the world. Our fear is that they will behave like we would given infinite power. We do have to be careful how we program their motivations.
Ray Kurzweil thinks that machines and humans will rapidly converge and then you won’t be able to separate the two. There will still be fighting but it will be between biomachines.
You worry too much. Computers can’t win. If they do, it will be at the end of 3.5 years of Antichrist’s rule. Are they the “crickets with human heads”? Even if they win, which I doubt, Christ is going to come and history will end. So there is not much to worry about.
The complexity of the world is what builds up this feeling of fragility and insecurity.
Our worst way to follow is denying KNOWLEDGE. Recall midle age, China under Mao, and many other times when fanatism and religion won the dispute. The recent Iraque invasion from one side and the fanatism in meadle east, are recent clear examples of what should be avoided.
Human being is very complex and vulnerable and we realy need references that we can trust. Those are not the ones religion or politicians tell us, but the things that can be checked and that are understandable, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. Scientific method is being build continuously based on things that are well defined, and usualy measured. When people deny knowledge I see fanatism and an effort to install a new DARK AGE, that is very conveniet to the “establishment”, that is, it is much easier to stay in power denying critical thinking. I believe that the future of our children is not predictable, but it will be better with understandable knowledge than with a new dark age as preached by many narrow minded people. A good book to read The Creation by Edward O. Wilson. ISBN 978-85-359-1178-7
If to speak about cyborgs, I would highly reccomed you the book
Dario Floreano and Claudio Mattiussi, Bio-Inspired Artificial
Intelligence: Theories, Methods, and Technologies
It is a scientific book and it shows you the state-of-art in what is referred to as ALife. So with cyborgs it will take some time but the development in this area is quite amasing. Some my short comments about the book in Russian are at
http://groups.google.com/group/fido7.su.science/t/42afbf66c68e3537
As for the Matrix, you will find some enjoyable reading at
http://www.simulation-argument.com/
Here I like most
David Chalmers, The Matrix as Metaphysics
http://consc.net/papers/matrix.pdf
where the author claims that even we live in some Matrix, it actually changes nothing. It will allow us to relax a bit.
Wow, there are several issues here. So, considering randomly: First, machines already do many things better than humans: move faster (cars), lift more (construction equipment), etc. Our world is almost inconceivable without machines. Do they devalue us? I don’t think so (that’s my opinion): they enable us to live longer, and more people to exist on the planet than might otherwise be possible.
Second, I believe that a fundamental human motivation is to seek survival, and to replicate. I believe that these motivations are built into almost every living thing. What are any computer’s motivations? A chess playing machine doesn’t want to play chess, it is the only thing in knows how to do. What will it mean for computers to be sentient? Does motivation come along as a free ride for sentience? I don’t think so.
For my own research, I am having a neural network learn to play tic-tac-toe from board images, and opponent moves, and that is it: no win/lose signal, no end of game signal. All the neural network “wants” to do is learn patterns. How does this translate to a psychological motivation? I guess what I am saying is that the portrayal in the media of A.I. being sinister seems to me to be far-fetched, more of a fear of loss of control than a well founded (established based on prior assumptions) thought sequence. But, I do think there is an interesting question in all of this: if an intelligence is founded on finding patterns, what will be its resulting psychology?
Nice article, Masha.
The march of technology is an inevitability as long as humanity has resources above and beyond those needed for bare subsistence. Therefore it is incumbent upon is to create technology in the most responsible, socially valuable manners possible.
Thankfully, many of these technologies are nothing other than magical spinnings of the media and dreamers. Further, many are very far future. Because they are far future, there are other advancements that will arise in parallel, safeguarding against possible damages. Humanity rarely makes something without built in or supportive co-creations.
We create nuclear reactors, and then we create extremely reliable failsafes for them. Yes, there are failures of systems and technologies, but these are inevitabilities, and part and parcel in our world. Danger has followed humanity from its first steps, from carnivorous killer animals to infantry wars to the cold war and to today’s economic woes.
It’s impossible to leave our houses without some risk, and to allow ourselves to be paralyzed by fears is to abdicate the responsibilities we accept when we call ourselves adults or parents.
Dear Javier,
Great point about humanity always having to take risks, as part of life. But we haven’t been around for too long. Dinosaurs inhibited Earth for waaaay longer then us, and then one day, boom, wiped out, just like that.
Interesting to think that humanity can get wiped out even faster by the technology that we ourselves create. Just a thought..
Best!
Masha
Hi Andrew,
Thank you for your comment. Computers will not have motivation unless you program into them. Which, seeing first hand what a computer program can do, I believe it totally possible. As you said - your neural network “wants” to learn patterns. But that’s all you programmed it to do. What if you programed it to want to learn how to learn? Or programed it to “want to” redesign it’s own code to make it more advanced?
These are not novel ideas by any means. Science fiction writers have a explored them quite a bit. For me it’s just scary and fascinating to see some of these science fiction ideas actually become reality in engineering R&D departments.
Best of luck with your neural network! (although I do hope it does not become a real Viki or Matrix
)
Cheers
Evgenii,
Thank you very much for the book recommendations. I will take a look. Hopefully Matrix as Metaphysics will help me sleep better at night.
Thanks for commenting!
Hi Mark,
Thank you for your insightful comment. Of course computers have no ambition. Yet.
That’s because we have not programed it into them yet. Our brains can be easily viewed as very sophisticated machines running extremely complex programs. In which case, as technology advances, theoretically we should get closer and closer to mimicking programs in human brain. Kurzweil’s idea seems very probably to me. But still disturbing :).
Thanks for contributing to this blog!
Masha
Thanks for these great quotes and bios of Kay and Kurzweil, Kieth!
Good point, Tony! Personally I try to stick to principles described in the 4-hour Workweek stay away from “crackberries” and have days w/out any e-mail and phone access. Very doable, even for consultants!
Thanks Scott! Great points.
In 1971, I wrote an introduction to the symposium “Imaging in the 70’s” in which I suggested that the age of instant communications was upon us. My hope was that it would allow a more immediate resolution of human needs. Unfortunately, the capability has been overwhelmed by marketing and trying to find anything you need requires hours of digging. Relationships have become more superficial and impersonal. Fewer people really know how things actually work and the computer simulations do little to improve our real knowledge. In fact, many who use such capabilites are not aware of what is actually involved. A future in which people are isolated in their homes like prisoners in their cells may be a reasonable projection. The recent Toyota recall proves my point in some ways. “It wasn’t me officer it was my car’s computer.” We also have the latent power of alternative computing systems like neural networks and fuzzy logic, that move beyond the lock-step of linear programming. AI systems are being developed in secret labs and advancing rapidly and some are becoming “magical”. Someone has also been working on tactile systems to simulate actual intercourse. Telling me that the future is positive is “whistling in the wind”.