Technology and Artificial Intelligence

"Never trust a computer you cannot throw out the window" - Steve Wozniak, cofounder of Apple

As technology advances, mankind is increasingly fascinated by the possibilities it offers. Since the daily life simplest objects, such as household appliances and smartphones, to the most sophisticated systems of space exploration and robotics, technology has proven to be a great ally of the material evolution of civilization.

Technology has provided previously unthinkable gains in human productive capacity, in medicine resources, in food production, in energy generation, in the capacity and speed of transportation means, in ease of communication and access to information and in physical comfort of much of humanity.

Although the overall cost of technology still limits the access to some of its benefits, it is clear that the trend of this cost is to decrease along time, thus making it possible to extend the access to those benefits to a growing number of people. Technology is so important for the human being that it can be considered as the main engine of civilization.

The greatest material advances made ​​in human history were promoted by technological revolutions, based on scientific discoveries that made ​​them possible: The agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, the information technology revolution and the newest possibility, that turns out to be the next step in this process, the revolution of robotics and artificial intelligence.

However, the use of technology by the human being has revealed some very harmful problems, spanning biological, psychological and spiritual aspects. Those problems are still poorly understood by science and therefore have been addressed in partial and precarious ways, since there are not enough studies to assess the damage caused by the misuse of technology.

Among the cases of misuse of technological resources I can single out three major issues that are certainly among the most serious: a) people emotional attachment to objects and everyday resources, b) the consequences of indiscriminate use of genetic engineering and c) the thoughtless development of artificial intelligence.

Emotional attachment to tech gadgets and resources is more common in the use of mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, game consoles and in the usage of the internet itself.

This addictive use of technology has caused serious problems of psychological dependence, in addition to the impoverishment of human relationships, which are replaced, in such cases, by mere virtual interactions. Those interactions are usually intensive, but are also marked by shallowness and detachment.

The indiscriminate use of genetic engineering, in its turn, has promoted certain genetic mutations in agricultural products and in living beings, whose consequences are not yet fully controlled, thus posing serious risks to human health and to the biological balance of the planet.

But the most serious of these problems caused by the misuse of technology is, in my view, the reckless development of artificial intelligence, or AI. This issue has been addressed in many cultural ways for a long time, whether as fiction, in books and movies, or seriously, by philosophers and men of science.

The technicians and scientists engaged in the development of artificial intelligence do not hide their enthusiasm and wonder at the possibilities presented by AI: the development of super-robots and supercomputers, able to perform tasks now performed exclusively by humans, much more efficiently, and also new tasks that will require intelligent and robust machines.

AI promises to develop machines not only able to think and to behave similarly or even identical to humans, but also to self-replicate and make decisions themselves. The benefits that could be yielded by this breed of cyber beings in the service of mankind would be unlimited. Starting from the work in harsh environments, on land and under the sea, to the exploration of other planets, through the execution of various services, both domestic and in most areas of human economy.

However, little has been discussed about the actual risks posed by this technology. Technicians and supporters of AI scientists have fun when questioned about the risks of a possible loss of control of superintelligent machines.

However, those risks are real, in the opinion of many knowledgeable people of AI projects in development. It may sound far-fetched to think that machines may eventually turn against humanity, but the hypothesis is well grounded. So says, for example, Nick Bostrom, a philosopher and professor at the University of Oxford, in the book Superintelligence: Paths, Hazards, Strategies", published in 2014. Every intelligent machine requires a programming, but the super-machines, according to Bostrom, are capable of abstractions unforeseen by its developers, which he calls "perverse instantiation".

In the extreme case, this problem could lead to the extinction of the human race. Another question is what the author calls "infrastructure profusion." This would be a situation in which the machine interprets the physical limits to its actions, including humans, as obstacles to the fulfillment of their goals. For Bostrom, machines designed in this way are not possible to be fully controlled, and are able to plan strategies absolutely subtle, in order to achieve their goals.

In an interview with BBC, Stephen Hawking talked about the technology he uses to speak, which was recently upgraded; involving a basic form of artificial intelligence. He said then that "the development of top form artificial intelligence can lead to the end of the human race."

According to Hawking, the primitive forms of artificial intelligence created to date have proved useful, but he fears the possible consequences of creating something that can overcome the intellectual capacity of the human being. "This can evolve and redesign itself, continuous and increasingly," claimed the physicist. "Human beings, limited to a slow biological evolution, are not a match to that, and would eventually be dominated."

In the TV show Extant, aired in 2014 by the American network CBS, a scientist of the AI area is responsible for a project called Humanich, consisting in creating learning capable androids, and of developing their intellectual and emotional intelligence in a natural domestic and social environment, reproducing the human life cycle; as children, youth and adults.

When showcasing the project to a group of potential investors, he was asked by one of the audience members, about the possibility of permanent deactivation of these androids in the critical case of threat to human life. The scientist, visibly angry, returned the question to the person who asked him, asking her if she had a son. When she replies that she had a daughter, he then compares the android-child he has in his house; which is like a son to him; with the biological daughter of this person. He says that, just like she has not planned a way to kill her daughter should she disobey her, he also had not planned resources to eliminate his android if he broke away of his control. The scientist also claimed that the brain of his android was identical to the human brain and therefore it did not require an off switch in case of exceptionalities, only ordinary education, in order to instill in him moral values, similarly to the education of a human being.

Although being a work of fiction, the show expresses the opinion of most AI's fans. Those scientists and technicians conceive the human being as a biological machine. According to them, consciousness is only the result of neurological interactions of the brain. An individual therefore would be moved only by his brain and would not have a soul or a spirit. Life therefore, for these people, is seen as an absolutely natural and spontaneous phenomenon, without any divine intervention. It is exactly this mechanistic view of the human being that makes for the greatest risk of artificial intelligence development.

Because of the lack of a soul or spirit, a race of super-intelligent machines would never acknowledge itself as a human or human-like species. So, even if they were instilled in their programing with peaceful and orderly humanitarian ethical concepts, their attitude towards humans would be unpredictable, when they realized their physical and intellectual superiority. In addition, these machines would evolve to the point of developing their own skills and technology, apart of all living species. The course of this progress would be also unpredictable, both in its constructive as destructive potential.

They would also probably review the ethical principles that were instilled in them, tending to the creation of their own ethics code. Human beings, when spiritually mature and broken, recognize God as their creator and submit to His sovereign will, because we were created by God. Such machines however, would never respect human as their creators or would submit to their counsel, once aware of their own existence.

The development of super-machines still requires a long time. Scientists are still trying to develop a cybernetic brain that blends the memory capacity and the speed of data processing of a machine with the information treatment process of the human brain. However, it is important that governments pay attention, while there is still time, to the imminent danger that this technology brings within it. Otherwise, humanity will be running the risk of being in the course of creating its own fatal enemy.