BE AFRAID

SEEING YOUR MARCH 2017 COVER

(pictured right), naturally I turned to Page 30 and “Rise Of The Robots”. After reading it with much interest, memories of my early childhood came flashing back. In the movie of the same name Omega Man, as played by Charlton Heston, did not have what we would call a superior intellect, but he had a goal: to kill his victim.

We are in possession of slaves that are persistent plodders. Computers do many things brilliantly; in 1994, one of them defeated the chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov. When taught the rules of a game, they can often defeat their own teachers. They can sort through billions of pieces of information in seconds, solving problems in mathematics and data-processing that no human would be able to attempt. But they can only do one thing at a time. Now a new method of programming computers has been discovered, software that may not only enable machines to outperform the human mind, but may also enable machines to think for themselves.

The creatures we create might not like the human race as we do. The obvious danger is that we might not be around much longer, or we might lead simply a slavelike existence. People who say it will never happen are not being realistic. If something is more intelligent than us, we will not be top dogs on Earth any more. This is the logical conclusion of work in the field of robotics and artifical intelligence. It is frightening; I don’t like to think about it. But if machines can be made as intelligent as humans, then that’s really it for the human race.

It will not be difficult, in the near future, for malicious people to build killer robots like that in the film The Terminator.

It may be, of course, that Omega Man will never come into existence. But Omega Man must nevertheless remain as one of the beneficent – or terrifying – possibilities of the not-so-distant future.

Thanks for an interesting and amazing magazine. KRISH DE CHESARAE PILLAY DURBAN