The machine takeover is already underway. Wow what a powerful statement to make, where is my proof? The proof is countries including even the United States are experimenting with a guaranteed income for everyone. Finland seems to have the best model so far, but there is an experiment being conducted in this country where a select amount of people will be given a guaranteed income and it won’t matter if they work or not, where they go even to foreign countries or anything else. The money will just keep coming. Some may say what does this have to do with my statement about machines taking over. It is simple really. We haven’t been told the entire truth about jobs getting harder to find. If you think it is hard now to find a job wait a few more years. Every government official knows automation is going to be the death of most jobs and the best way for people to survive is with a guaranteed income.

As automation takes over, the machines will be getting smarter. There are those who think this will eventually lead to another form of life, intelligent machine and computer life. A mathematician at Oxford has said we should think about protecting artificial intelligence using a human rights agenda. Apparently some believe we need protection from these computers and machines, but they may also need protection from us. Personally I do not see how we could adequately protect a computer or machine which has become a life form when we cannot even protect other humans on this planet. Do engineers and scientists actually believe a country where one tribe is wiping out another would care about destroying a computerized machine or computer? Even if the machine passed all the tests and was ruled sentient, to most it would still be a machine and even if it begged for its life, most would laugh and destroy it if they wanted to.

One of the problems with society is we do things without plans to make them work smoothly. Where are the government plans to help us when there are no longer jobs. Sure a guaranteed income is being talked about, but we all know how these government controlled programs work out. Take Social Security for example. If this is the only source of income for a senior, they don’t have enough money to meet their living expenses. Will this be the kind of government guaranteed income given out? Think about it, where is this money going to come from for these payments. It will have to come from the companies, the same companies who will be saving huge amount because of not needing human labor. These are the companies who have lobbies in Washington who will be pressing to make their share of the money a much smaller amount. They certainly won’t care if people can or cannot live on the amount of money given. Then too we have to ask will seniors have Social Security taken away if they are given a guaranteed income? It probably will be taken away regardless of what the politicians say.

Let’s be optimists and say everything will work. Will this cause unrest among the population? Some people may have nothing to do. I say this, because I have seen many a retired person go to pot because they had no other interests. Will drugs and alcohol usage take over? People need something to do and for some people going to work was therapy for them. It got them away from troubles they were having at home, gave them somewhere to go when they were alone and in some cases made them feel good, because they were respected. Meeting other people on the job was good for a lot of people. Jobs gave many a sense of belonging and closeness, especially those types of jobs where people helped others to achieve some goal or helped defend or keep the public safe. These types of jobs have employee events and the odd picnic here and there and this made people feel much closer.

We talked about giving machines values and many years ago Isaac Asimov a science fiction writer came up with the three laws of robotics which are:
  A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
Asimov added a fourth law at a later date and this is it, a robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
Some say no matter how you embed these laws into the software and into the hardware computers will become so smart we humans will be unable to prevent them from accessing the laws and either rewriting them or deleting them.

When computers and robots which are essentially mobile computers deal with humans will there come a time when they will start to believe we are inferior since there is no doubt they will be able to process data millions of times faster than us and come up with complicated answers and solutions to problems way before us. It might turn into a relationship like one we have with our pets. The difference is these computers may not love us. Indeed they may even lose respect for us and look at us as imperfect. Will there come a time when computers decide to try and make us better even if we don’t want them to? If computers in the form of robots force us to undergo surgery to implant chips into us, even if they have the best of intensions, I don’t think we will be very happy even if it improves our memories and ability to learn. We could land up being treated like slaves or worse if that is possible.

One of the worst scenarios is the creation of military killer robots. We have already started going down this path, but most of the robots are still humanly controlled, but there is much talk about making killer robots autonomous. The robots would decide who to kill. This means the robots will think it is okay to kill certain humans and may decide there is no difference between humans and start to kill all humans it comes across. It sound like stuff out of some cheap horror movie, but it really isn’t. We have to think about these things now and have a reasonable plan for the future. We can see what is coming and now is the time to mold future events so the human race doesn’t eventually suffer.