Teaching Children Not To Fear Artificial Intelligence
By JoAnn M. Laing and Thomas Atwood
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Many years ago, a joke circulated through America.
Scientists poured all of man’s knowledge into a computer to ask one question.
The query: Is there a God?
The answer: There is now.
In popular media this scenario was illustrated in the Terminator movies and much earlier in the prophetic classic, The Forbin Project.
Robotics then was a nascent science.
Today, increasingly sophisticated robotic applications are becoming more and more a part of everyday life.
Drones are robotic applications. There are a variety of robotic toys available for both children and adults. So too, self-driving cars are just around the corner as a consumer product. Hospitals, nursing homes and other facilities use robots to help care for patients. Robotics today is one of the fastest growing scientific and industrial sectors. Large corporations, small businesses, and even garage-based enterprises are turning out ever more sophisticated robotic applications.
The systems deployed today have ultimate human control built into their programs. However, much research is being conducted in giving these robotic units the ability to think and react, and in ways more closely paralleling the outcomes of human thought. Called artificial intelligence (AI), the aim is to enable these machines to make choices and then perform tasks mimicking human thought processes.
More importantly, these processes are programmed to learn as they operate. Some can grow in sophistication as they digest more and more data. This is the process by which humans increase their knowledge and ability to think. As robotic applications learn, they can, if scientists are to be believed, come closer to humans in terms of brain power. Thoughtful individuals are worrying humankind may, eventually, start losing control of the machines that have become so much a part of everyday existence. They fear computers may be edging closer to that point where we may see the beginnings of AI evolving into new forms programmed by computers for use in a next generation of computers. New forms that, ultimately, could become independent, sentient thinking entities.
To a degree this is already happening. Computer scientists admit machines are now writing programs within their own systems they are not aware of or control. Put simply, computers are already in some ways replicating themselves.
This can lead to undesirable consequences. Not all robotic applications are benign. Robotic applications can inadvertently turn lethal as apparently benign applications go wrong. Recently, an industrial robot in Europe grabbed and killed a human worker, apparently the result of some sort of programming mix up. Science fiction is rife with robots facing unforgiving choices when trying to avoid accidents, then making decisions with potentially lethal outcomes.
recent months increasing concerns have been expressed about the growing sophistication of computers. In a dramatic and sometimes frightening radio interview on The National Robotics Education Foundation Robo Radio program, leading AI innovators Tracey and Cameron Hughes highlighted how scientists in their field were concerned about these issues.
“We constantly are aware of the dangers of a runaway robotic program and try to build in safeguards. However, we are moving into the unknown in some aspects of AI and must be aware of the danger,” they noted.
At the same time, individuals are reacting to the robotics revolution. Just within the past weeks, a famed hitchhiking robot was run over in Philadelphia. Another individual challenged a credit-application system that denied him a credit card based on the bank’s “learned system” which has no human checking factor. One young man developed a bullet-firing drone and posted the result on YouTube. A homeowner shot down a hovering drone over his house. Leading experts such as Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, and others are expressing concerns over the potential dangers of AI, as well.
But economic pressures make the march of robotics unstoppable. Robotics is one of the fastest growing economic sectors in the world. In the United States, there are 150,000 unfilled jobs in the robotics industry – owing to a shortage of technical personnel needed to run, program and maintain computerized machines and manage the services they provide (causing the ever-increasing number of such jobs to steadily migrate to foreign countries).
More than a million young people are involved in robotics at all levels of America’s education system. When used in programs aimed at at-risk children, robotics reduces the drop-out rate by 80%. These at-risk students are highly motivated to learn about robotics and view it as entirely benign. In the view of students and educators alike, there is no downside to robotics.
In his stories that gave the name to robotics, Isaac Asimov postulated 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 orders given 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 Law
AI may be rendering them useless. Perhaps it is time to have a thoughtful discussion on where robotic applications are taking the world.
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