Discussing Robot Dangers

It's funny. Until you think about it.
Oh, and now it's more like 13 years!

My increasing concern over the speed and depth of technological developments is beginning to show some little progress. Since my TED talk on The Erotic Crisis (outlining a contest between human and mechanical values), which seemed at the time like a lone cry in the wilderness when I delivered that in 2014, the subject has now become quite widely discussed in the media. Main stream media articles are appearing every day and many good books have been written about the field, (Our Final Invention and Surviving AI are two good overviews). That's good because we need to be talking about this stuff–all of us! It's nothing less than the future of humanity that hangs in the balance and we've been pretty cavalier about it for a long time now.

Meanwhile, some are working to smooth our integration with robots. RoboPsych is a website dedicated to easing the human/robot interface. If you haven't had much interaction with robots, we are all going to experience this a great deal in the next few years. This week I was interviewed by RoboPsych's founder, Tom Guarriello that was podcast on the website. Our discussion was somewhat rambling (as interviews often go) but I got across most of the main points I wanted that much of the danger we face is hidden. I won't go into it here, but essentially the greatest danger doesn't emanate from the machines but from our own underestimated vulnerabilities in interacting with them. Tom is more optimistic than I about the future, but we really need open discussions like this to come to a real understanding.

To that end I'm helping sponsor a symposium, “Tech Tsunami: Preserving the Human”, also sponsored by the Montana Universities, which will be presented at Carroll College, Helena, MT, Oct. 28-30, featuring some AI giants. It will be geared to the general public, not experts, with the intention of involving a greater number of people in the discussion of what it means to be human and what kind of future we will build for ourselves. If we don't participate, one day the robots will simply take their place at the controls. It's up to us.