Saturday, November 1, 2014

The ultimate nightmare of machine warfare?


We've heard Elon Musk warn about the dangers of artificial intelligence.  Here's a short CGI sci-fi movie that appears to draw inspiration from 'The Terminator' and similar epics, and illustrates why Mr. Musk is concerned.





Some fine movie-making there.  Congratulations to all concerned.

Peter

7 comments:

SiGraybeard said...

Cool.

When several scientists have come forward to say that autonomous AI could be the most dangerous threat we face, it seems like it merits some thought.

Minor edit in your first link - Elon is spelled wrong.

Eric Wilner said...

Awesome CGI there!

Thing about Mr. Musk's warning, though: he's calling for government regulation to prevent the sort of apocalypse that could only result from government (or government-directed) uses of AI.
No private AI development could result in a rogue machine intelligence being in charge of a national-scale military force, say, nor even wide-scale air traffic control.
Worst thing your intelligent Talky Toaster could do would be to burn your toast, or perhaps to mess up a resupply order. Yes, it might declare war on Mars, but who's gonna take orders from your toaster? That's like saying a cat walking across my keyboard could trigger /;lllllknhhhcaaaaaaaa

(OK, so there's a not-really-governmental huge vulnerability: the financial system, which has become totally dependent on computers on really fast networks. But that could be brought down by a simple coding error, no AI required.)

kurt9 said...

Guys, there is something far more insidious going on with these warnings over AI. AI (and autonomous warfare) evens the playing field between small and large organizations. A small, self-interested group of people, say, several thousand, who go out and build themselves a city-state (seastead) on the ocean cannot afford the million man armies to defend themselves. They can, however, used advanced 3-D printing and other such technologies (remember, this is around 2030 or so when we have these kinds of technologies) to create an automated military based on robots and swarms of MEMS-sized robots such as to effectively defend their liberty and autonomy from large established entities (U.S. federal government, PRC, UN, etc.). Eseentially, Elon Musk wants to deny us the technology that will elevate the small to the same capabilities as the large. Anyone who favors autonomy and liberty should not listen to he complaining and warnings.

Chris said...

+1 to kurt9.

The video was technically well done, but the plot outcome was obvious about half-way through. Very standard interrogation techniques. Enough so that I have seen it in movies bad enough that I have forgotten them.

Christina RN LMT said...

Heh, I'm with my daughter on this one...it's the people you have to worry about! http://www.systems-ready.com/index.php?id=20

tweell said...

Sigh. He's not even as smart as Leia.

Quirel said...

I think a better ending to the video would have been for R'as to turn his starship around and kamikaze into a control center or factory.