AIs now trade on the stock market too.Īn overlord would give orders and expect them to be followed. AI does that already – lending decisions are frequently made by an AI sifting through mountains of information to decide your credit worthiness. World dominators need to control important parts of our lives, say our access to money or our ability to buy a house. So what would a Turing Test for the ‘skill’ of world domination look like? To explore that we need to compare the antisocial AI behaviours with the attributes expected of human world domination.
The premise being that if you can’t tell the difference between AI and human skill, the AI has passed the test and should be considered as intelligent as humans. The famous Turning Test of machine intelligence was set up to measure a particular skill – the ability to conduct a believable conversation. When we consider an AI’s opportunity to rule the world we are on somewhat firmer ground. Ultron’s plot motivation, based on brittle logic combined with indifference to life, seems at odds with todays AI systems that reason mathematically with uncertainty and are built to work safely with users. This destruction by logic is reminiscent of the notion that a computer would select a stopped clock over one that is two seconds slow, as the stopped clock is right twice a day whereas the slow one is never right. In Ultron’s case the goal of protecting the earth can only be accomplished by wiping out humanity. But would we give our AI tools cause to feel threatened? They provide benefits for us and there also seems little reason in creating a sense of self-awareness in a system that searches the web for the nearest Italian restaurant, for example.Īnother popular motive for AIs’ evilness is their zealous application of logic. In movies AI are often driven by self preservation, a realisation that fearful humans might shut them down. Few would say Intelligence in itself unswervingly leads to a desire to rule the world. But fears of AI’s potential negative impact on humanity remain as seen in its projection into characters like Ultron, a super-intelligence accidentally created by the Avengers.īut what relation do the evil AIs of the movies have to scientific reality? Could an AI take over the world? How would it do it? And why would it want to? AI movie villains need to consider the whodunit staples of motive and opportunity.
AI in our mobile phones apply and adapt their rules to learn to serve us better, for example. AI is becoming ever present in our lives, at least in the form of software tools that demonstrate elements of human-like intelligence.
‘Robot Mech Machine’ Image by Computerizer from PixabayĪvengers: Age of Ultron is the latest film about robots or artificial intelligences ( AI) trying to take over the world. By Peter McOwan, Queen Mary University of London (written in 2015)
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