The artificial life of the party
Modern movie culture would have you believe artificial intelligence is out to kill us all.
In 2001: A Space Odyssey, Hal, the AI computer aboard a space flight to Jupiter, develops a mind of its own and turns against the crew. The Terminator makes his mission clear in the movie’s title. Ava, the pretty-faced android in Ex Machina, has a killer instinct. David, the pretty-faced android in Prometheus, also doesn’t have the best intentions for human survival.
Prometheus director Ridley Scott, who further explores the cunning side of artificial intelligence in his new Alien: Covenant, says, “If you’re going to use something that’s smarter than you are, that’s when it starts to get dangerous.”
It’s been a running theme through Scott’s three films set in the Alien universe, dating back to the 1979 original in which Sigourney Weaver battles not only an alien killing machine but also Ash, an android who views his human crewmates as expendable. Prometheus in 2012 introduced David, an earlier android version with a similar lack of scruples.
Filmmakers have long projected that artificial intelligence could spell the end of humanity, and some top scientists and tech leaders — including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk — share their concern.
Musk, an early investor in the development of AI, told Vanity Fair earlier this year that he worries the technology could ultimately “produce something evil by accident,” such as “a fleet of artificial intelligence-enhanced robots capable of destroying mankind.”
But astrophysicist, author and film fan Neil deGrasse Tyson said he believes there’s nothing to worry about. Killer androids may make for fun film fodder, but he doesn’t think they’re an imminent, or eventual, reality.
“I’m completely fearless of AI,” Tyson said last week.
Tyson noted that humans have been inventing machines to replace human labour since the days of the Industrial Revolution, and computers have succeeded in outsmarting people since before Watson beat Ken Jennings at Jeopardy!
In movies, artificially intelligent beings might look human, but most real-life robots don’t, he said. The robots welding parts on automobile assembly lines look like machines, not mechanics.
“The first thing we think of when we have a machine that has capacity is not to put it into something that looks human,” Tyson said. “Because the human form is not very good at anything, so why have it look human?”
For Scott, the possibility of evil artificial intelligence comes back to the question of the creator: Who is doing the creating, and for what purpose?
“Whoever the inventor is, he’s going to want to go the whole nine yards,” the filmmaker said. “Hence you get the expression of the mad professor who makes a mistake in going too far where the alien is way smarter than he is or the monsters are way smarter than he is and that’s where you get problems.
“But we will definitely go there ... Because what it’s leading to is the question of creation. And creation, I don’t care who you are, is on everyone’s mind.”
Tyson is also fascinated with creation. His latest book, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, is about the birth of the universe and carbon-based life.
Androids, though, “are just completely pointless,” he said. And they couldn’t become self-aware without consciousness, something scientists have yet to fully grasp.
“You’re saying we’re going to end up programming this into a machine and then it’s going to decide we shouldn’t exist, when we don’t even understand our own consciousness? I just don’t see it,” he said.