What do Terminator and Matrix have in common with Hotel Rwanda? Namely, they all deal with power struggles. OK, it may seem rather strange that I’m drawing a correlation between these films, but bear with me for a moment while I explain my position. It seems to me that most conflicts eventually rest on one of the following two areas: Values and Resources
Value conflicts are wars and battles that spring from a clash of ethnic, ethic, or moral disagreement. While there isn’t anything particularly wrong about an individual defining themselves by their nationality, religion, or ethics, once they take a stand on these things it inevitably causes small conflicts. Even at the most basic level, when one assesses themselves by a certain criteria; he tends to assess other people by these criteria as well. So if I’m proud of my American, Christian, and Pacifist ways I may hold myself in an elevated position over someone who doesn’t share the same beliefs. Even subtle criticism like this lead to bigger conflicts as I interact with those I disagree with. The outworking of my own pride can eventually become war if it’s not tended well.
Watch the Terminator series with this sort of idea in the back of your mind, and you’ll see the direct correlation between Skynet’s decision to wipe out humanity with this value conflict. The self-aware AI, of course, makes the jump from criticism to war much faster than humans would, but the principle seen in the film is very similar to what we can read into historical events like the Inquisition, the Holocaust, and Hotel Rwanda.
Each of these are value-based conflicts where the self-proclaimed superior/powerful group does its best to eliminate or convert those who don’t meet their standard.
Resource conflicts are any kind of disagreement or battle that deals with scarcity. When resources are unlimited and there is plenty of land, food, etc to go around for everyone, competition isn’t nearly as fierce and normally doesn’t result in war or death. But as soon as there are limits in place, humans always try to get as much as they can- even at the cost of others.
When we watch ads from two politicians, trading jabs, it’s basically the same thing. There can only be one President of the United States and so anyone running who wants to win will do whatever they can to grab the most votes. Votes are the limited resource.
I used to work for Universal Orlando Resort where our theme parks were continually “at war” with Disney for market share. We wanted as many tourists as possible to visit our park- rather than Disney. Time was the resources we were fighting over.
If you read into the history of Matrix movies, they basically boil down to a war based on resource problems. Robots need power and after humans nuke the sky- crippling the machines’ ability to gather solar power- their only source of fuel is the humans themselves. Humans are only enslaved because the robots want to continue functioning.
So as we watch movies like Terminator, Matrix, and Hotel Rwanda, I think it’s important to get to the bottom of conflict if we really want to avoid the violence depicted within each film. The bottom line is, we still need to answer these questions if we’re going to do anything about wars and interpersonal conflicts:
What can we do to lessen the value and resource conflicts before they grow out of control and threaten our very lives?
The other day I came home and found that the internet wasn’t working. I didn’t have anything particular that I needed to do- I think I was going to check my e-mail- but I got really nervous for a moment, wondering what I was missing because my link to the world was cut off.
It was strange, though, because for a moment after my initial panic I actually felt a sense of relief. I actually felt free. There was a sudden freedom from any obligation to respond to e-mails, Facebook updates, Tweets, and RSS feeds from GoogleReader. The internet was down and so I had a legitimate excuse to be disconnected from the world and solely focused on my family. The truth is, it’s shocking that I felt this way because only a few months ago I would have been going crazy trying to figure out how to get my connection back.
Remember that scene in Matrix where Joe Pantoliano’s character Cypher begs a Sentinel to allow him back into the Matrix? I didn’t make the correlation until now, but I’m beginning to think that his need for the Matrix is similar to our need for the internet and social networking.
Can you imagine life without our current range of technologies? Could we even go back to the way it was before personal computers, cell phones, Wikipedia, Google, and Facebook inundated our culture?
I’m hard pressed to admit it, but I think we’re already enslaved to technology. Most of us couldn’t figure out a way to grow our own food, weave our own clothes, or find water that’s safe to drink. Whether or not our own technology turns on us, I think it’s pretty safe to say that any sort of major interruption would be more than most of us could handle.
I think that’s why New Orleans eroded so quickly into madness after Hurricane Katrina.
Without our technology, we’re helpless.
So, I don’t believe that AI will kill us.
I think it’s much more likely that we’ll kill ourselves off in the wake of a major power failure.
But that’s some of the beauty of these AI Monster Movies. They may not paint an accurate picture of what the world will really be like if the robots take over, but they paint a very clear symbol of the slavery that we’ve created for ourselves. As I mentioned in the first post, it’s all very much like the Tower of Babel- we’ve placed our hope in technology rather than in God and in our fellow man.
And as a result, we’re confused. We don’t understand each other any longer. We only understand our own needs and our own beliefs.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
The other day, I was unplugged and rather than spending the evening worrying about whether or not the internet would come back on, I played with my son and I spoke with my wife. I’ve been doing that a lot more lately. In fact, last night I didn’t even look at my computer for more than a few seconds.
I spent the evening with them, instead. And I’m going to be really honest…
It was much better than the Matrix.
What do Terminator, Matrix, and the Will Smith version of I, Robot all have in common?Well for starters, they all begin with the assumption that in the future robots or computers will develop a will, a self-awareness, or a set of ethics based on their own evolution/experience rather than what they were created with. But is this true? Can computers actually transcend their own data and interact with the universe in an intelligent way? Of course for the purposes of this blog we're going to go with a formidable AI definition, not a weak one where robots are able to make small choices about stacking their parts differently in order to traverse a room. For movies like Terminator to come to fruition, we'd have to assume that computers and robots were able to move far beyond the normal threhold of AI and into something very close to a Human's ability to reason and choose. So, when I say AI- that's what I mean. An Artificial Intellegence that closely resembles a human being's.
The lectures I’ve been listening to by Hubert Dreyfus seem to indicate that on a purely philosophical level it would be almost impossible for true AI to spring into existence within the foreseeable future. The primary reason is that AI is programmed without a holistic ontology. Without a holistic reference for the universe, robots are limited to calculated “symbol shunting” rather than significant, meaningful interactions. So unless there is a significant change in the way we’ve been doing AI- we’re going to continue getting calculated rather than intuitive results.
But how to you create a robot or computer that has the ability to understand the holistic model of how the world works? You know, a better question might be this- how do humans understand the holistic form of life?
This is one of the hardest questions to answer, because as Heidegger noted, trying to describe the way we get around in the world is like trying to describe a really functional light source. We don’t even notice the light source until there’s something wrong with it. We tend to see, instead, the things that are illuminated because of the light. Likewise, our understanding of how the world works is only apparent to us when it’s not working correctly- when we’re disoriented or confused.
And if we’re not yet able to put much of a framework around our own experience regarding how the world works- I’m fairly certain that any framework we try to put around a machine will be inherently flawed.
So, the problem for AI programmers is not just figuring out the algorithms, software, and hardware needed to make some sort of self-aware creation. Their real problem is figuring out how to translate the context of the environment into a computer in a way that will allow it to mimic human understanding of how the world works. And since none of us are really clear on how we truly understand how the world works- it may be quite a while before robots figure it out.
I know I promised some religious implications/thoughts as well… But due to time constraints, I’m not sure that I have them figured out well enough to transcribe here. If you’ve got some religious ideas why computers/robots can or cannot become truly AI let me have ‘em. I’d love to hear from you.
I love Robots and so I'm pleased to announce that Robots are the topic for this week.
Background. I watched Terminator: Salvation on Saturday with my good friend Seth and it got me thinking about AI and robots and whether or not what’s presented in Terminator, Matrix, and a number of other ‘Robots as Frankenstein’s Monster’ movies could actually happen. As it stands, I’m not really sure- but in an effort to fully explore the possibilities, I want to break this week into four different parts so that we can discuss the topic fluidly.
1. Today will be an introduction with some questions to get your reaction.
2. Wednesday will be a religious/philosophical discussion about whether AI can actually become self-aware and what it means to be human.
3. Thursday will be a religious/philosophical discussion about whether or not technology needs to begin killing us off with guns before we decide that it’s enslaved us.
4. Friday will be a political discussion about whether or not governments have the right to target ethnic groups through profiling (and even genocide?).
I can’t do an exhaustive study on robots because there are literally too many religious, philosophical, and political issues at steak in movies like these in order to sum them up in a few days. But I’m pretty sure that in one sense, all of these stories are a reiteration of the Tower of Babel- they’re all about what happens when humans place their faith, hope, and love into technology rather than on God (or even their fellow man).
You might want to read up on the Tower here and here if you’re not familiar with it. In preparation for this week, you may also want to read up on Asimov’s theories about what humans would/should do to prevent a Frankenstein’s Monster occurrence.
Questions to consider today and this week:
Do you think AI (artificial intelligence) will ever become self-aware?
Could we already be enslaved to technology/robots?
Why (in fiction at least) do the things we create always rise up against us?
Do the oppressed have the right to overthrow their oppressors?
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