Why robots won’t rise up
AI expert says it is humans who will build an attachment
Robots will never rise up against humans and instead will become part of the family, according to a leading expert in artificial intelligence. We are entering an age in which children will grow up with robot friends and the elderly will be looked after by robot carers, said Dr Nigel Shadbolt, professor of computer science at Oxford University.
But fears that the machines will become sentient and threaten humanity are baseless, he insisted.
“Does AI threaten humanity? Certainly anything you see in Hollywood portrays it that way. They are usually mad, bad and dangerous to know. Essentially, you don’t want to get too close to them,” he said. “But this is to misunderstand where the real problem lies. It is not artificial intelligence that should terrify you, it is natural stupidity,” Shadbolt told the Hay Festival in Wales.
He said while people worry that robots might “wake up” or become “super capable”, that wasn’t going to happen.
He said he understood why people are “freaked out” by Amazon Alexa or Google Home devices that can communicate with us.
But he said it is humans, not computers, who wish to take the relationship further.
“We will begin to empathise with them. It will not be long before these devices are the companions that grow up with our children and that look after us in elder care — from cradle to grave.
“We project emotions and intentions onto these systems. It doesn’t matter that there’s nobody at home in the circuits, just a very good answer chatbot. It doesn’t matter. We will become extraordinarily attached to them.”
Shadbolt said this has already begun to happen, referring to a ceremony in Japan earlier this month at which Buddhist monks led a memorial to 114 “deceased” Sony robot dogs. “Tears were shed. These were much-loved members of the family,” he said.
Also this month, the robotics company Boston Dynamics released footage of a humanoid robot running outside.
The audience laughed as the robot paused before gingerly jumping over a log. “Look what you’re doing. You’re imagining there is a little AI in there trying to get over the log. It’s a control algorithm,” said Shadbolt, who is principal of Jesus College, Oxford and coauthor with Roger Hampson of
It is common to project feelings on to artificial intelligence, he added, such as the IBM super-computer, Watson, which was pitted against two champions on the US quiz show
in 2011.
Shadbolt said: “Watson achieved superhuman levels of performance in this game using essentially a massive data base of facts and training on previous games played. It has the impression of being smart, generally aware. But I can assure you that Watson had no sense of great satisfaction as he beat the world’s best.”