The machines take over

Hal? Open the pod bay doors Hal. Hal?....

Charles Cosmano says, "On the whole I find technophobia to be pretty silly."

To which I reply, or counter, the problem with machines is that they take away from, 1. our skills, and 2. our judgment. Machines that automate tasks take away skills; machines that automate decisions help take away our judgment.

For example, automatic cameras focus and decide exposure for us. Well and good; better snapshots. What we lose is a kind of creative control, now ceded to a chip programmer and camera designer in Japan, China, etc. I personally like to calculate exposure, like to calculate focus, precisely because *I* know what I'm trying to achieve in the photo; the camera cannot. Sure, I'll "ruin" more film; but I'll also possibly once in a while achieve results that go beyond a generic "in focus" and "exposed properly." This ignores another point, that "smart" cameras can also be dumb at times, even though they're getting smarter and smarter.

I think there's validity in some kinds of concern about technology. Machines centralize control and decision making and detract from the intelligent application of our own intellects and wills in informed ways.

PDGM

Since David brought up sci-fi...
There was a wonderful short story I read, about this very theme. I can't recall if it was Asimov, or Ray Bradbury, or who.
But there was a computer that was eventually in control of everything, including all the smaller computers and machines. Some kid tries to turn off the machine, which would have paralyzed society and plummeted civilization into the Dark Ages. He is apprehended right before he succeeds.
The authorities can't figure out how the kid could have gotten so close to fulfilling his plan. He doesn't seem to have a motive. Somehow he got through layers of security, into the entrails of the computer.
The kid turns out to have only been taking instructions. The end of the story reveals that the computer had become self-aware, and wanted to commit suicide.
For some reason, that story seems pertinent to the present situation. But don't ask me to elaborate.

Technology is neutral. It is how we use it. I would be considered an "expert" in this type of technology discussed in the article. It is not the technology, it is the misunderstanding and misapplication of the technology that is problematic. We are not subordinate to the machine so much as we are to the processes architected for the machines.

In order to appreciate the article you have to understand geek culture and the hubris and shame that governs it. I should write a book about this subject since I've been doing it for so long. Everyone assumes that there are competent people in charge who understand what is going on. A bunch of "Scotties" running engineering so when all the ensigns are beamed to the planet, the senior officers can keep the ship running. The fact is the higher up and longer you are away from the technology the more detached you become from specifics. One of the reasons why I no longer trust the business or political leadership when technology meets the culture.

It's been my opinion for a few years now that the political and business leadership is very ignorant of just what this high tech hardware and software is designed to do, and as we "progress" with more of it, I am even more convinced. A corporation will spend 12 million dollars on computers to rid itself of 8 million dollars of payroll for a repetitive tasks.

There is a good book out called "The Black Swan". The author was featured on The Edge too. Applications are built for very specific functions, they may be quite complex. The truth is they can never quite capture all the complexity, nor can systems adapt easily to new variables. So you stagnate around an inadequate construct until it is so bad that leadership is willing to spend millions of dollars to inadequacies.

PDGM's example above is really really good, it describes the problem very well. Try to understand what he or she is saying and extrapolate it to just about everything computerish. It's not merely about art, it's about the suppression of imagination. The machines encourage mediocrity. There's no incentive to strive for more, when 83% of your needs are met.

Hope this wasn't too rambling.

As an engineering student in the 1980's, I saw the transition from using computers as computing tools to modeling tools. Many students could not, even back then, explain the modeling algorithms. They would work the required number of problems to show some minimal level of understanding, then gain access to the mainframe. After that, they trusted the computer to think, while their job was to input information and conditions and sit back and wait for the answer.

It created a huge disconnect between the basic rules and the results. The basic rules of Mechanincal engineering - Newton's laws of motion, physics, metallurgical chemistry, thermodynamics and fluid flow - were pre-programmed into the machine. The engineers who were trained during this time had poor fundamental understanding of basic engineering principles. The best and brightest were encouraged to blow through those classes quickly and get to work on the new models. I remember at the time how short-sighted that appoach seemed.

Probably just a technical corollary to PDGM's excellent post above.

"crunchy con" is not another word for Y2K scare is it?!? Really, people have not lost their "judgment" or anything else. The more I read about it, the more distracted the "crunchy cons" seem to be...

As an engineering student in the 1980's, I saw the transition from using computers as computing tools to modeling tools. Many students could not, even back then, explain the modeling algorithms. They would work the required number of problems to show some minimal level of understanding, then gain access to the mainframe. After that, they trusted the computer to think, while their job was to input information and conditions and sit back and wait for the answer.

It created a huge disconnect between the basic rules and the results. The basic rules of Mechanincal engineering - Newton's laws of motion, physics, metallurgical chemistry, thermodynamics and fluid flow - were pre-programmed into the machine. The engineers who were trained during this time had poor fundamental understanding of basic engineering principles. The best and brightest were encouraged to blow through those classes quickly and get to work on the new models. I remember at the time how short-sighted that appoach seemed.

Probably just a technical corollary to PDGM's excellent post above.

"24% of all statistics are meaningless." -- Artificial intelligence axiom.

We are at least one and likely several evolutionary steps from independent machine intelligence. The "positronic" brain posited by Asimov and further used in Star Trek is perhaps closer than it used to be -- quantum mechanics seems to be its predecessor -- but we simply are not even close yet.

I am a computer programmer. I know all about garbage-in garbage-out, anthropomorphism, and the animistic impulses. For now, machine intelligence lives only in the minds of the human beholders.

First, I note that the link for RULES OF CONDUCT is null. Something needs to be adjusted there. I assume common courtesy is in order, and ad hominem insults are severely discouraged.

I am not worried that machines will take over. I still wonder whether the capacity of self-awareness is unique to life, even to humanity, and not resolvable to a threshold of neuronic pathways. I love Robert Heinlein's MYCROFT HOLMES computer in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, but I don't see it happening in real life. Self-awareness may even be a gift from God, not subject to duplication in strictly material terms.

What is hazardous, is the way we rely on computers. Anyone who has ever tried to inject into any process information that any human mind would recognize as relevant, but which a standardized program will not accept, knows how frustrating that is at best, and how dangerous it could be at worst. There was an interesting science fiction story about a streamlined computerized court system in which a civil suit over a bill from a book club turned into a conviction for first degree murder due to entry of a billing number in a coded space for a criminal offense. The governor decided the simplest way to short circuit that was to issue a pardon. After the execution had taken place, the governor's office got back a notice from the computer saying "The pardon was not counter-signed by your supervisor."

As far as students relying on computer programs to process data, I believe we need an ethic from age 6 months that no human being may use an automated process until they have mastered the manual process, so that they know what the computer is doing, and, they can handle the work themselves if the electricity goes out, or if a good portion of global civilization crashes. Ideally this would not only mean learning to make a fire by rubbing sticks before learning to run a furnace, and learning arithmetic by flash cards before being allowed a calculator, it would mean butchering an animal before being allowed to cook and eat meat (post a certain minimum age).

I have occasionally used Excell pages, but I always set up the equations myself, and make sure I know exactly what each programmed cell is doing. Then I check the first few rows to make sure it is working the way it is supposed to. If I don't know how to do that, I call my mother, who does know, and she walks me through it.

Other folks have mentioned this before, but a lot of the scenarios that Rod presents tend to cancel each other out.

Peak Oil cancels out Machine Takeover because if the cheap energy that fuel the industrial civilization runs out, then there is no need for the Intelligent Machines in the first place.

Albert: All that singularity/transhumanism stuff is nonsense. There are hard, floor-of-the-cosmos physical constraints preventing humans becoming godlike by technology:

- Faster-than-light travel is impossible - humans will never travel further than Mars.
- Even if replacements for oil are developed, energy and other resources will always be scarce - Michael Moorcock-type fantasies about absolute control over the planet are ruled out.
- Artificial intelligence has effectively failed - there seems to be something irreducible (perhaps nonmaterial) about the human mind (and perhaps some animal minds).

On balance, seeing how badly humanity behaves, I think our weakness is kind of good news.

Dependence upon machines, on the other hand, is more of a real concern, although, really, it goes back at least to the beginning of metal-working - anyone here no how to make a steel knife from iron ore?
Anyone read EM Foster's "The Machine Stops?"

It seems to be an anthropomorphism to talk about "machines" any differently than clothing, housing, fire, the wheel, whatever. No living thing survives without dependence on something totally outside itself - the environment, prey, etc. For almost all life, they have NO control at all over these things which they are dependent.

The fact that we exert ANY control at all, over machines or anything else that dictates our future is the notable point to be making.

Cell phones and related technologies are an example of technology run-a-muck. I laugh when people talk about being slaves to their blackberry or cell phone.

Turn the darn thing off. No one is so important that he/she can't be unavailable for an hour or two. If it's an extreme emergency a human can find you (me).

As an engineering student in the 1980's, I saw the transition from using computers as computing tools to modeling tools. Many students could not, even back then, explain the modeling algorithms.

My father was a chemical engineer (now retired). I remember that in the late 80s he began to express his disgust with many of the young engineers whom his company was interviewing and hiring. He said, "They don't know how to do wet chemistry anymore! They can't do anything unless they see it on a screen!"

Anonymous,

I am lucky that I have the sort of job where I don't need to be on-call constantly (unless someone decides that there is a need for 24/7 Latin expertise ;-) ). But unfortunately there are many people who can't just "turn the darn thing off", because it's a condition of their job that they be available all the time. It's easy to say that "no one is so important that he/she can't be available for an hour or two," and philosophically I agree. But to many employers today, perpetual availability seems increasingly to be a condition of employment.