I have written about automation several times over the last few years, but there is so much more to it than just jobs disappearing. When we look at the world we have probably realized there are people out there which don’t always use the best judgment and sometimes this causes grief for the rest of us. They may be people who are mentally unbalanced, influenced by illegal or even legal drugs. On the other hand they could be people who want more power or even want world domination. If we tie in these desires with advanced artificial intelligence (AI) we can begin to see what I like to refer to as an unholy alliance. Artificial intelligence has great potential to make the world a better place, but it also has a very dark side. I have always said teaching machines it is okay to kill humans is wrong no matter what the circumstances. Presently robots of all kinds are being introduced in the world’s armed forces and some of them have what is equivalent to James Bond’s license to kill. Machine intelligence is just that, it has no morals, it just does what it is told to do and has no feeling either way about what it is doing.

One of the very first things we should do before developing intelligent weapons is make sure if we have to use them to kill a target, the command to kill is given by a human and there is no determination by the machine if this should be done or not. Once we give a machine the power of life and death over humans we have created a sort of god. No machine or nonhuman should ever have that power. This brings me to the subject of robot police. There has been a lot of talk about using robots to either replace police or supplement them. This trend has just started and the policemen are more like information givers at the moment. In the United States, stores are just beginning to replace humans with a standing robot which will answer all your questions about the products it carries including where they are located. While this may seem very advanced to many of us, truly it is still very primitive compared to some of the other devices out there. Remember this, when and if you see one of these robots it has taken at least one job away from a worker.

There are so many astonishing old photos out there which show assembly lines from years ago with hundreds and even thousands of workers assembling things. Current photos show these same types of assembly lines and there are only a couple of humans in the factory, because the assembly line is made up of all robotic machines. Remember not only have these jobs disappeared, but the population has increased substantially since the days the photos were taken. While the loss of jobs is bad enough there are people in this world who just should not have access to this technology, but they will have it. I am talking about people like the leader of North Korea for one. Artificial intelligence doesn’t always manifest itself in the form of a robot. It can be a computer with software on it and depending on what it is taught it could be one of the hardest weapons to defeat. As I said before, basically it only has the conscience which was programmed into to it. It would have no problem with ethics if it wanted to turn off an electrical grid which might kill thousands of people in hospitals and if the electricity stayed off long enough, kill hundreds of thousands more.

In the Terminator movies the assumption was the artificial intelligence would eventually hate humans and view us as the enemy and something which had to be stamped out. There have been many studies which likened the human race to a virus. They say humans are not like the rest of the mammals, because we move to an area and multiply until the natural resources there are consumed. Viruses do about the same thing. If an AI program was told the parameters of a viral infection and ordered to stamp out all viruses, would it try and wipe out the human race thinking we fit those parameters? One little misstep in programming an AI might lead to this conclusion or some mad scientist type might decide to let an AI think this on purpose. One country might eventually start a war using an AI controlled computer which thinks humans in a certain country are viruses it has to wipe out by using all sorts of weapons under its control. If it did that, it might “think” these parameters fit all the other countries of the earth and continue its program even against the country which created it, something like what the Frankenstein monster did.

Could an AI someday turn all our medical devices against us, along with smart cars, planes and who knows what else? Can you imagine planes falling from the skies, cars all crashing and our entire environment turning against us? Sounds like science fiction doesn’t it, but it is entirely possible. Remember humans are imperfect and they could do something wrong which would have dire consequences. We are the same people who lose laptops, spill drinks into computer keyboards and drop electronics. We even invented a word for a computer mishap called “a bug”. It seems to me eventually someone would make a mistake programming an AI and this could lead to trouble. We have already violated the law of robotics set down by Isaac Asimov which states:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Yes these laws were given to us by a science fiction writer, but they have been well respected for many years and seem to make a lot of sense. We are on the frontier of creating what could be new life, robot life. It is going to come to a point in the near future where we will not be able to tell if a machine is alive or not. Teaching a new type of life to kill humans doesn’t seem like a smart thing to do.