Be nice to the machines and they might be nice to you
IMAGINE THAT YOU’RE the editor of a technology magazine wanting to write a column about how astonishingly rapid the growth of computing has been. Imagine you’re looking for an opening line for said column. Imagine that you want to confirm when the first computer was built, and think that asking your smart speaker might be the perfect illustration of technology’s rapid rise…
Me: “Alexa, when did computers begin?”
Echo: “Here’s something I found on the web. According to lsuagcenter.com: The LSU AgCenter expert says most researchers recommend that children begin using the computer at age four.”
Maybe I phrased that badly. Let’s try again…
Me: “Alexa, when did computing begin?”
Echo: “I know about 837 film noirs, including Sunset
Boulevard, which was released on 10 August 1950.”
A bit bizarre, but okay. It’s clearly my fault for not being more precise:
Me: “Alexa, when was the first computer built?”
Echo: “First Computer Limited was completed in 1822.” It wasn’t quite the point I imagined I’d be making at this stage in the column, but it at least does show how far we still need to go, alongside my original point about how far we’ve come. I’m using natural language to speak to an inanimate object that can wirelessly tap into a mysterious power to understand what I’m saying. That’s incredible. The fact that the mysterious power in question can’t interpret the meaning behind my words, and that its stab at interpretation is so hopelessly wrong, serves to show that we don’t need to fear HAL-like intelligences just yet:
Me: “HAL, destroy Earth!”
HAL: “Your pizza will arrive in 30 minutes.”
We’re early in our journey. Incredibly early. Consider that we, as a species, have been around for roughly 300,000 years, a fraction of the four billion years that life has existed on our planet, and that the actual answer to my question is that electronic computers have only been here for circa 70 years. To translate that into the 24-hour clock of life’s existence, humans have been around for the past six seconds and computers for 0.0015 seconds.
Now let’s put on our best Professor Brian Cox voice and delve even deeper. The first 0.0006 seconds of computing was spent messing around with mainframes and minicomputers, the next 0.0006 the PC, and only in the past 0.0003 seconds have we seen the rise of the phone as the dominant computing device thanks to its always-on connection to computing power, the likes of which even Arthur C Clarke did not conceive.
So, Alexa, I forgive you for being stupid sometimes. Unlike humans, now hunched over with six seconds of age, she’s only going to become cleverer. As you’ll see if you turn to Jonathan Bray’s review of the new Echo Show 10 on p58, she’s already smart enough to know exactly where you are in the room and tilt the screen towards you. And, having been released in November 2014, Alexa is a mere baby at 0.00014 seconds. Who knows what she’ll be capable of when she turns six.