The three laws of robotics:
1. A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction,
allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings
except where such orders would conflict with the First law.
3. A robot must protect its
own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or
Second Laws.
Isaac Asimov, "Runaround"
(1942)
I know a few people who have interesting theories why
American cities and society are in a state of decay, evincing a huge disparity
of rich and poor. Some
of these technocratic people believe that uneducated masses are not able to
compete in an increasingly mathematically meritocratic environment. They believe that because these
non-pocket protector dullards are not educated in math, science, engineering or
physical science, they will fail, they will be subject to the whims of other
societies with more technically adept citizens who can win the coming
math-a-thon.
There is a superficial element of truth in this
premise. But this is only a
temporary transitional phase in the journey of mankind.
The world of new technology, they say, favors those
scientifically trained; the people who lack that education will become
increasingly unemployable. But
that only forebodes a perhaps even more ambivalent human dénouement.
Those who argue that the uneducated will be obliged to inhabit
an unteremenschen sector of the
economy, doomed to flip burgers or wait tables fail to recognize that even some
classes of those educated in science and technology can also easily be made unemployable and probably and
inevitably will involuntarily be cast among their more less accomplished
brethren.
This class of putative elites will be replaced by
artificially intelligent machines that are exponentially increasing their
abilities to learn, to work--to think. These machines are being engineered to make human
technologic endeavor obsolete. They
will be inevitably more competent than humans in calculations, engineering,
equations, and any process that requires any form of mathematical skill. The skills will go beyond
mathematics. In some
respects they already do.
These machines are our children, our progeny, our descendents. No human can compete with a machine
that does not die, that does not fail, that has no biologic or moving parts--a
machine that can endure infinitely through self-maintenance, artificially
obtained intelligence and self-replication. The precursors to these machines are here already although
still somewhat primitive in form.
The machines that answer the phone and ask us questions, that asks us to
make choices, the robots that assemble cars, and a plethora of devices that
have already replaced humans on the assembly line, in the bank, in the hospital
and elsewhere.
They are more and more ubiquitous every day.
Anyone over 50 can remember what it was like before
computers. Statements about
science and technology requirements for human employment made today will have
no bearing perhaps as early as ten or fifteen years from now. Admittedly, one would need that
knowledge to get a job today, but we are not convinced that it will do any good
as an exponential explosion of computing and robotic power will make the average
human mathematician or engineer as unnecessary as a buggy whip.
Already machines make medical diagnoses, beat humans at chess, and even
play "Jeopardy" better than humans. Playing Jeopardy requires subtle
understanding of plays on words, social nuance, and irony. While it is true that scientifically trained humans created
these machines, these benevolent Frankensteins will ultimately take over all
human scientific endeavor. Cyborgs
will be programmed with the total sum of human knowledge; humans may remain
their creators, but it is not certain they will remain their masters.
Humanities, philosophy, music and art will be what distinguish
human from machine and even then we are not so certain. The law will protect us (see Isaac
Asimov's laws of robotics, above) and remain even more relevant than ever
before. But probably not in
science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Will machines compose
symphonies? Pour their emotions out on great works of art? Feel pain? Be spiritual? Or will that be left to humans?
Emotions and feelings are not something in which machines
are conversant.
