William Hurt stars in the AMC TV series “Humans,” about androids living among us as helpers and, in his case, senior caretakers. Credit: AMC
This week's Digital Savant column is all about robots, particularly recent ones in pop culture that have got many of us thinking about how humans and artificial intelligence will get along in the next few decades. You can find it in Tuesday's American-Statesman print edition or over on MyStatesman.com.
You’ve got your killing machines in the new “Terminator” movie, your helpful, perhaps even soulful, droids in the new AMC show “Humans” and the alluring, possibly dangerous entity of Ava in the indie hit movie “Ex-Machina.” (The latter two: highly recommended. “Terminator Genisys” you should probably skip for now).
In the column, I also spoke to two UT professors who deal in the implications of robots, AI and psychology. Here’s an excerpt:
In the near-future of "Genisys," all the oblivious humans have their noses stuck in their phones and laptops and welcome Genisys as a life-changing, evolutionary computing step. Nobody in 2017, apparently, has learned the hard lesson that you should always wait a few days before a major software upgrade to try it out. See what happens, people? The Earth blows up and the robots take over.
Likely scenario? Let's ask a computer scientist. Risto Miikkulainen specializes in neuroscience and "biologically-inspired computation." He says that while some advances, like self-driving cars, have happened faster than expected, that Hollywood scaremongering about robots is unrealistic.
The kill-all-humans scenario, he says, is a "very, very unlikely course of events."
"Smart machines are always designed and built to serve humans, and to augment human abilities," Miikkulainen said. "Humans will be augmented with machines, and perhaps merge with them, but a situation where humans would want to replace humans is not a logical future scenario.
You can read the full column here. Got thoughts on future robots and our place among them? Drop a comment below (and don't worry, Skynet's not watching… yet.)
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