Do You Trust This Computer?
Directed by Chris Paine
Produced by Tiffany Asakawa & Jessie Deeter
Written by Mark Monroe
Production company: Papercut Films
The instant you saw the title of this piece, I’ll bet you paused, at least for an instant, and looked at your screen as a part of a computer, and not as some inobtrusive item that just happened to have words that you were reading.
When, to paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, you make the message about the medium, your personal paradigm shifts.
Your personal device, safely mindless and wanting nothing, is trustworthy as far as volition goes. It isn’t plotting against you, and won’t decide that you are holding it back and thus you need to go.
But the computer is hooked up to the network, and that’s a whole lot more problematical. There’s many bad actors out there–scam artists, propagandists and people who just take joy in messing with you.
But some of the threats aren’t human. While it may not be intended as a threat, Google’s “Deep Mind”, a large array of servers designed to endlessly acquire information, is already an immensely powerful entity, and in the wrong hands, could do fantastic amounts of damage.
Do You Trust This Computer raises the disturbing notion that the “wrong hands” could, as AI develops, become Deep Mind itself.
Harlen Ellison’s most chilling story was “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” in which a vindictive and immortal rages against its human creators for entombing it in a vast cave with nothing to do except contemplate a universe it cannot experience. It doesn’t take a huge stretch of the imagination to picture Deep Mind as Ellison’s hideous Allied Mastercomputer (“AM”).
We seem to be creating intelligence. AI is no longer a pipedream. But we don’t understand the intelligence we are creating, in part because we don’t really understand our own.
AI means autonomous machines that can drive trucks, flip burgers, perform surgery, entertain, even succor and comfort, and be better at it than us. At what point to we become superfluous in the new world we have created. A quote from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is used in the documentary: “You are my creator, but I am your master” The documentary doesn’t include the chilling coda: “Obey!”
The issue of autonomous weapons (Killer Robots) is raised, of course, and to the public, this may be the most recognizable and immediate threat. It’s impossible not to look at the amazing robots created by Boston Dynamics and not feel a sense of apprehension: something faster and more powerful than a doberman, able to climb ladders, open doors, talk to computers. Now imagine it with 50 calibre guns and lasers.
The documentary has interviews with a range of prominent individuals relevant to AI, such as Ray Kurzweil, Elon Musk and Jonathan Nolan
If you haven’t thought seriously about AI, now it the time to start. It isn’t the future, and it isn’t science fiction. It’s here and now, and already affecting you.
Now on Amazon Prime.