|
Unless
I had a nice long entry typed this morning and Netscape ate it. This only happens under Unix. It had to do with "extreme Darwinism," my phrase for Ysabel and Amy's philosophy I'm always arguing with them, sentient computers, workstations and whether the system here is alive, body modifications, eugenics, gene splicing, and a robot named Kismet.
It was really interesting and also deep and long and rambly and I'm really annoyed that I lost it. And I don't want to repeat it again, but I have to explain "extreme Darwinism" because I'm going to need it later.
So here we go, in a somewhat stripped-down version.
This began with a robot at the Institvte's AI Lab named Kismet. Kismet is the reason I left that issue of Discover for Ysabel. Kismet is adorable. In fact, that's part of the point - Kismet is meant to be cute and reactive, to encourage humans to provide it with stimuli - which in this case means talking to it and smiling at it and waving toys at it.
Once Cynthia Breazeal began working on Kismet, her boss, Rodney Brooks - one of the few people I am willing to call "genius" - realized that her ideas would work well with his huge ongoing project, Cog. Cog is one of the most serious attempts ever at building a humanoid robot, and if anyone can do it, Brooks and his crew can. But Cog is also big and mechanical and scary-looking. Putting a Kismet face on Cog would help a lot. Since Brooks believes that "humanoid intelligence requires humanoid interactions," what good is a robot no one wants to talk to?
(It occurs to me that Cog is a stereotypically male design - building a somewhat frightening, shiny toy - and that Kismet is a stereotypically female design - building an infant you coo to - but that's probably just me being nasty.)
All of this led to my assertion that the whole project might not be a good idea anyway. Actually, my first statement was "I don't see the point in it." But that dodges the issue.
I like artificial intelligence research well enough when it has practical, limited uses. I concede that there are things which computers/robots can do better and faster than humans. Given our overpopulation level, it's debatable whether it's worth having one robot replace fifty humans - why not give the humans something to do? - but that's not important.
What's important is: I resist the idea of "sentience" and humanoid manifestations in robots. If the day arrives when there are robots walking upright among us, which can mimic our thinking patterns and our behavioral patterns - when the Asimov robots arrive - that is the day I take to the hills and find that 4x6 cabin in Montana and begin making bombs.
Why? I don't know. Because it bothers me. Because it is something that has no reason to be, science creating something just to prove it can do it. That's when science is at its worst.
And then the conversation went to other things where I feel that science should take what it has learned and lock it away. Genetic modification of foods is my number-one item on this list. Robots are merely annoying; gene-splicing has me fearing for my life. It doesn't make the vegetables any better - why do you think heritage tomatoes and other "lost breeds" are coming back so big? - and it has huge risks. Gene splicing is science playing with something it does not come close to being able to understand or control at this point.
Yes, Ys and Amy argue, but if you lock it away, they'll never learn to understand or control it.
Yes, I reply, but their mistakes could result in a lot of people dying just because one or two people were ignorant.
So what? They reply.
And I sit there stunned.
So, at last, we come to "extreme Darwinism." If the robots become sentient and decide humans are a waste of space, it's our own error. If they manage to obliterate us, then - Q.E.D. - we deserved it. In Ysabel and Amy's world, stupidity may carry huge penalties and it should not be prevented from happening.
I buy that to an extent - despite the fact that they and I quibble over this all the time, I honestly do not believe in saving stupid people from themselves. But I do believe in saving the smart people from the stupid people. And, sometimes, in saving the stupid people from the smart people.
To use an analogy they came up with: A hot stove is its own lesson. If a child touches a hot stove, the child gets burned, and the child is not likely to touch the hot stove again. One fit of pain is far more effective than a hundred warnings from Momma. I buy that - but that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about a case where one genetic mishap can kill many thousands of people.
Imagine if some modified plant mutated into something nasty two generations after its initial seeding (that's the problem with genes; they don't stand still, and therefore the consequences of alterations are impossible to predict) and got into the reservoir that is Boston's sole water supply. Farfetched perhaps, but the point is, does all of Boston deserve to die to teach that this is dangerous? They didn't make the mistake, after all.
Ysabel and Amy say yes. Sometimes abject lessons have to be big. They are ruthless. Of course, they can afford to be. Ys and Amy have no fear of mortality. I do.
To my mind, when I die, the fun ends. I want the fun to last as long as possible. I don't want some other idiot ruining my fun for me. This makes me not only suspicious, but risk-averse.
It also makes me reluctant to write off thousands of people just to prove to the scientific community that it's playing with dynamite. Even if they're thousands of mostly stupid people.
I wouldn't mind if science ground to a halt. The older I get, the more Luddite I get. Robots? Don't need them. Gene splicing? The food was okay the way it was. Eugenics? I don't especially want the rich to be able to buy smarter babies. Space travel? We already have the technology and we're too dumb to exploit it. More computing power? We can barely utilize all we've got now. Intelligent systems? I don't want my car or my toaster to second-guess me. Synthetic fuels? Why not make more efficient use of what we've got?
Sometimes I feel like the Lorax. I think when they bury me, I'll have my tombstone say UNLESS. Nothing else.
© Columbine
|
|
