SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The Terminator: How James Cameron's 'science-fiction slasher film' predicted AI fears, 40 years ago
[...] With its killer robots and its rogue AI system, Skynet, The Terminator has become synonymous with the spectre of a machine intelligence that turns against its human creators. Picture editors routinely illustrate articles about AI with the chrome death's head of the film's T-800 "hunter-killer" robot. The roboticist Ronald Arkin used clips from the film in a cautionary 2013 talk called How NOT to build a Terminator.
[...] The layperson is likely to imagine unaligned AI as rebellious and malevolent. But the likes of Nick Bostrom insist that the real danger is from careless programming. Think of the sorcerer's broom in Disney's Fantasia: a device that obediently follows its instructions to ruinous extremes. The second type of AI is not human enough it lacks common sense and moral judgement. The first is too human - selfish, resentful, power-hungry. Both could in theory be genocidal.
The Terminator therefore both helps and hinders our understanding of AI: what it means for a machine to "think", and how it could go horrifically wrong. Many AI researchers resent the Terminator obsession altogether for exaggerating the existential risk of AI at the expense of more immediate dangers such as mass unemployment, disinformation and autonomous weapons. "First, it makes us worry about things that we probably don't need to fret about," writes Michael Woolridge. "But secondly, it draws attention away from those issues raised by AI that we should be concerned about."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 21 2024, @05:51PM (5 children)
I, Robot was the real prophet
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday October 21 2024, @08:00PM (3 children)
I agree with no terminator. But I appear to be in the minority.
Yes, I, Robot was a great idea.
I was already planning on re-reading "The Two Faces of Tomorrow" (James P Hogan) which I had read decades ago.
The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 21 2024, @08:24PM (2 children)
I, Robot is the future AI we think is interesting. Terminator is the AI future we fear.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2024, @12:29AM (1 child)
I fear everything we take interest in. It's always turned into a weapon
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday October 22 2024, @02:13PM
Many technological advancements have military applications. However there are often other applications which are not military.
The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Tuesday October 22 2024, @02:35AM
I think it's much more likely that RoboCop is the much better predictor. Specifically, ED-209. It was:
1. Rushed to market with wildly insufficient testing and safety measures.
2. Designed as the result of corporate machinations rather than anything resembling sane engineering principles.
3. Completely and comically unprepared to handle many of the scenarios it found itself in, in no small part thanks to the previous point.
4. Allegedly for fighting crime, but actually used to prop up a failing institution.
5. Getting a lot of innocent as well as guilty people killed because basically everybody with power was indifferent to all the problems.
All this should sound very familiar to most engineering types, and is also remarkably similar to the current state of self-driving vehicles.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin