We all know well the Third Law of robotics; for the benefit
of refreshing your memory it is a robot must protect its own
existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
this is not a rule made by self-actuating Artificial Intelligence; it’s a rule
we made for them so they remain subservient but also a reflection of our own
imperfection. it is an act on our part of divine providence rooted in our
struggle between soul and body on one hand and sublimity and fallibility on the
other.
We are capable of the act that defies evolutionary advantage
and reason. We call it sacrifice, it’s an act based on our emotions that goes
against our nature because by nature we are programmed to maximise our life and
prevent harm or death. our most valuable faculty is reason. We identify
preferences on rational grounds and this process of reasoning has put us on top
of all creatures. is sacrifice a province of superior intelligence or is it an
aberration, more like a bug or glitch in AI. The latter undermines the validity
of the Third Robotic Law and the former raises safety concerns.
The first question to ask is when will machines have an
original thought and the answer to that is they already have many original
thoughts. that brings us to the question of when are they going to be concerned
about self-preservation? let me back up a bit and get to that in a
minute.
A self-recursive computer is going to be so much smarter
than us that it will be the same as we are smarter in comparison to an ant.
When was the last time you cared about killing ants while digging in your
garden (it’s rhetorical).
We can get tangled up on various nodes discussing what
constitutes smart but let’s just say we are different smart. We are creative
and strategic while computers are analytical and logical. the later carries
huge advantages over the former just like human superior intelligence is better
than ants’ superior abilities. Our Intelligence helped us dominate earth but we
are not the most capable. Ants are capable of a wide range of moves such
as jumping, gliding, rafting; they can also form living chains to bridge water
or vegetation.
Self-preservation relates to how sacrifice is perceived; robots’
impression of it depends on their relation with us. We don't know what
Cybernetics will think of us, it will certainly solve hunger, war and other
problems we struggle with today but it might take the route of the Android
immaculately portrayed by Fassbender in Alien Covenant.
We just have to wait until the latter half of this century
and see. The take away for your career is if you are considering to take up
coding don't bother now, computers will soon be self-coding (Recursive
AI) and focus on Psycho-Cybernetics because once they are here they will
know what you are thinking.
are robots going to be concerned about Me, Me, Me or is
sacrifice innate to super intelligence.
