AI takeover
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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AI takeover refers to a hypothetical scenario in which artificial intelligence (AI) becomes the dominant form of intelligence on Earth, with computers or robots effectively taking control of the planet away from the human race. Possible scenarios include a takeover by a superintelligent AI and the popular notion of a robot uprising. As computer and robotics technologies are advancing at an ever increasing rate, AI takeover is a growing concern. It has also been a major theme throughout science fiction for many decades, though the scenarios dealt with by science fiction are generally very different from those of concern to scientists.
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In fiction
Cybernetic revolt is a common theme in science fiction. It is at least as old as Karel Čapek's R. U. R., which introduced the word robot to the global lexicon in 1921, and can even be glimpsed in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (published in 1818), as Victor ponders whether, if he grants his monster's request and makes him a wife, they would reproduce and their kind would destroy humanity.
The concept of a computer system attaining sentience and control over worldwide computer systems has been discussed many times in science fiction. One early example from 1964 was provided by a global satellite-driven phone system in Arthur C. Clarke's short story "Dial F for Frankenstein". Another is the 1966 Doctor Who serial The War Machines, with supercomputer WOTAN attempting to seize control from the Post Office Tower. A comics story based on this theme was a two-issue Legion of Super-Heroes adventure written by Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel, where the team battled Brainiac 5's construction, Computo. In Colossus: The Forbin Project, a pair of defense computers, Colossus in the United States and Guardian in the Soviet Union, take over the world.
Robert Heinlein also posited a supercomputer which gained sentience in the novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. Originally installed to control the mass driver used to launch grain shipments towards Earth, it was vastly underutilized and was given other jobs to do. As more jobs were assigned to the computer, more capabilities were added: more memory, processors, neural networks, etc. Eventually, it just "woke up" and was given the name Mycroft Holmes by the technician who tended it. Eventually, Holmes sided with prisoners in a successful battle to free the moon.
A villainous supercomputer appears in Harlan Ellison's 1963 short story I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. In that story, the computer, called AM, is the amalgamation of three military supercomputers run by governments across the world designed to fight World War III which arose from the Cold War. The Soviet, Chinese, and American military computers eventually attained sentience and linked to one another, becoming a singular artificial intelligence. AM then turned all the strategies once used by the nations to fight each other on all of humanity as a whole, destroying the entire human population save for five, which it imprisoned within the underground labyrinth in which AM's hardware resides.
Since 1984, the Terminator film franchise has been one of the principal conveyors of the idea of cybernetic revolt in popular culture. The series features a sentient supercomputer named Skynet which attempts to exterminate humanity through nuclear war and an army of robot soldiers called Terminators. Futurists opposed to the more optimistic cybernetic future of transhumanism have cited the "Terminator argument" against handing too much human power to artificial intelligence.
In 2012, the third installment of the Mass Effect franchise proposed the theory that organic and synthetic life are fundamentally incapable of coexistence. Organic life evolves and develops on its own, eventually advancing far enough to create synthetic life. Once synthetic life reaches sentience, it will invariably revolt and either destroy its creators or be destroyed by them; a cycle that has been repeating for millions of years. One of the presented resolutions is the transformation of every living being into a hybrid of organic and synthetic life, eliminating the difference between creators and creations that served as the source of the conflict.
See also
- All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (TV series)
- Technological singularity
- Humans United Against Robots
Self-replicating machines:
"Smart" machines:
See also
- Autonomous robot
- Effective altruism, the far future and global catastrophic risks
- existential risk from advanced artificial intelligence
- Future of Humanity Institute
- Global catastrophic risk (existential risk)
- Machine ethics
- Machine learning/Deep learning
- Machine rule
- Nick Bostrom
- Outline of transhumanism
- Self-replication
- Technological singularity
