The Enigma Of Machine Life

Engineers and scientists are now making predictions which have scared many people. The reason for this fear is we are being told we may no longer be the dominant species on the planet earth in the near future. I am not talking about aliens coming here or animals getting smarter than we are, I am talking about something we are creating and it is machines with artificial intelligence. I have heard all sorts of guesses when this is going to happen and recently a businessman who should have enough intelligence in this area since he is intimately connect to the field of robotics and A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) has suggested we only have about thirty years to go before this happens. This really makes me wonder if humans could be this stupid to let machines become alive and smarter than us? If someone knows if they continuing doing a certain action like developing A.I. to the point will it will kill them or enslave them why would they continue to do this? The answer is they probably think they can control it and use it to make a lot of money. Money is always at the root of these problems, but besides money science thinks machines which are more intelligent than we are will help us to unlock the secrets of the universe.

I cannot help but think of how accurate some science fiction movies and books were at predicting what life would be like in the future and the gadgets which we would have. Perhaps the people developing these intelligent machines should also take note of those other science fiction movies which showed machines getting too intelligent and destroying mankind. When you think about this you also have to consider the fact machines will stay under our control, after all they are programmed and it seems to me before an intelligent machine can become a danger it first has to attain true self-aware intelligence. I am talking about not only being able to solve problems, it has to get its own agenda. If this happens the machine would become a life form, a new species of intelligent life and just because we create machines which can calculate faster and can imitate life doesn’t mean they will be alive.

When life is spoken about there are areas of it which we don’t understand. An example of this is a virus. Some people will tell you a virus is alive and others say it is not. According to Scientific American a virus is alive. If you think it is hard to tell if a virus is alive or not, just wait until the question comes up in the future about a machine which seems to be. It will be virtually impossible to tell if a machine is sentient or not. I say this because a good programmer may be able to make a machine seem alive when it isn’t. There is a test called the “Turing test” which is supposed to be able to let us know if a machine is able to exhibit intelligent behavior. The test is more or less flawed. Here is how it works. An “intelligent” machine is separated from a human judge and they engage in conversation and if the human doesn’t realize he is talking to a machine it is said to have passed the test. I just don’t think this is much of a test since we have been developing algorithms to do this since computers have existed. Our cell phones now have something akin to this as they answer our questions.

Life is not just intelligence, it is also feeling and emotion. If one could truly hurt the feelings of an A.I. this might be a step into further testing it for life. How could we really know we were not being tricked? If I programmed a computer to pick up on insults and gave it the choice of several different responses chosen randomly which sounded like you hurt its feelings, might I not think it could be insulted and thus think it might be alive? I remember a software program from many years ago which responded to questions typed into it. There was no speech only text and the name of it has long since been lost to my memory, but you could ask it anything and you would get some kind of answer including an answer when you insulted it. You might call it a name and it might respond you hurt its feelings. It certainly was not alive and it certainly had no feelings, but the programmer created these answers. It was a crude program from the late 1980s, but I am telling you about it to make a point. If a more sophisticated program like this was in use, you might not even know you were talking to a computer program. You would be giving the thing credit for being alive which it didn’t deserve.

As we talk about the chances of machines attaining life, which is really what we are talking about, it just might be impossible and future generations might find this laughable, unlike many people today. We do not even know how to create life in any other area and assume it is only a matter of intelligence which may not be true at all. If we were to create the most intelligent machine in the world which seemed to be alive, it wouldn’t mean it was. Another question I wonder about is why would a machine ever have an agenda? One of the first things which would have to happen is the machine would have to get the urge to reproduce to create more like itself. No intelligent life form wants to be alone. This in itself might be a sign a machine was achieving self-awareness. We could never allow this to happen if we want to continue to exist as a race.

The other question which has not and cannot be answered right now is the question of whether self-aware machines would see us has a threat. If they studied our history they might, or if they thought we were going to destroy them they also might, but is it possible they might see us as their creators and even worship us as gods. We really don’t know which way they would feel.

Should we be worried about machines becoming alive? Somehow I really don’t think we can create machine life no matter how hard we try. Could we be fooled and think we created it? I think this is quite possible with cleaver programming. Would there really be any difference if we thought something was alive and if it was not? I don’t think there would be much of a difference in the everyday dealings with such a machine, except for the fact we might feel we couldn’t scrap it when the time came and we might also try not to offend it.