Abstract
A few years back I taught a course on the remote control of robots , a field known as telerobotics (Thomas S (2003) Telerobotics, Automation, and Human Supervisory Control, MIT Press). At that time, “insect-like” robots roamed my lab greeting guests. I viewed teaching the class as an opportunity to spend the term talking about increasingly intelligent robots and to discuss the topic of our cyborg future. Known among students as a faculty that made provocative statements to capture their attention and generate discussion, the first thing I said to my class was “The next step in human evolution is for humans to become a machine. Let’s talk about that this term.” In the mid-1990s when telerobotic systems were being developed and to this day, the human operator in the system with a 100 trillion synapse brain is by far the most complex and intelligent component of the system. But still, I noticed that different aspects of telerobotic systems were improving, and rapidly, and I envisioned a time when the robot would no longer need a human supervisor, other than providing the input for the desired output of the system. As I taught the course, in the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but ask myself; how long will it be until artificially intelligent robots determine their own interests and surpass us?
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Notes
- 1.
Thomas Sheridan, 2003, Telerobotics, Automation, and Human Supervisory Control, MIT Press.
- 2.
Müller and Bostrom AI Progress Poll, at: http://aiimpacts.org/muller-and-bostrom-ai-progress-poll/; Alice Robb, 2014, This Is What It Will Look Like When Robots Take All Our Jobs, Discussing the results of a survey by Nick Bostrom, at: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119419/what-artificial-intelligence-powered-economy-looks.
- 3.
Rise of the Machines, at: http://theweek.com/articles/443029/rise-machines.
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Id.
- 5.
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See generally, How Close Are We To A Post-Human World? 2015, at: http://www.salvationandsurvival.com/2015/05/how-close-are-we-to-post-human-world.html; Martin Rees, 2004, Our Final Hour a Scientists Warning, Basic Books.
- 7.
Ray Kurzweil, infra note 24.
- 8.
Sarah Knapton, 2015, Humans ‘will become God-like cyborgs within 200 years,’ The amalgamation of man and machine will be the ‘biggest evolution in biology’ claims Professor Yuval Noah Harari, at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay-festival/11627386/Humans-will-become-God-like-cyborgs-within-200-years.html.
- 9.
Sarah Knaption, id.; Yuval Noah Harari, 2015, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Harper Press.
- 10.
Sarah Knaption, id.
- 11.
The Church-Turing Thesis, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, at: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/church-turing/.
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Antonio Regalado, 2013, The Brain is Not Computable, MIT Technology Review, at: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/511421/the-brain-is-not-computable/.
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Id.
- 14.
Hans Moravec, 2000, Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind, Oxford University Press; Hans Moravec, 1990, Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence, Harvard University Press.
- 15.
Id.
- 16.
Rise of the Machines, id., note 3.
- 17.
Id.
- 18.
Dylan Love, 2014, By 2045 ‘The Top Species Will No Longer Be Humans,’ And That Could Be A Problem, at: http://www.businessinsider.com/louis-del-monte-interview-on-the-singularity-2014-7.
- 19.
Of course if we work backwards, and go from 22 billion neurons in the cortex to 11 billion then 5.5 billion, we quickly get a being that would lack the intelligence to build an artificial intelligence.
- 20.
- 21.
Sydney Perkowitz, 2005, Digital People in Manufacturing: Making Them and Using Them, National Academy of Engineering, at: https://www.nae.edu/Publications/Bridge/CelebratingManufacturingTechnology7296/DigitalPeopleinManufacturingMakingThemandUsingThem.aspx.
- 22.
Id.
- 23.
Sydney Perkowitz, id., note 21.
- 24.
Ray Kurzweil, 2013, How to Build a Mind, The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, Penguin Books; Ray Kurzweil, 2006, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Penguin Books; Ray Kurzweil, 2000, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, Penguin Books.
- 25.
Peter Diamandis, 2015, Ray Kurzweil’s Mind-Boggling Predictions for the Next 25 Years, at: http://singularityhub.com/2015/01/26/ray-kurzweils-mind-boggling-predictions-for-the-next-25-years/; Martine Rothblatt, 2014, Virtually Human: The Promise and the Peril of Digital Immortality, St. Martin’s Press.
- 26.
Id.
- 27.
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- 28.
Id.
- 29.
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- 30.
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- 31.
Peter Carlson, 2000, Letting Silicon-Chip Implants Do the Talking, at: http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/secret_projects/project1.70.htm.
- 32.
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- 33.
David Cotriss, 2015, Robots for Humans: Addressing the Engineering Challenges, at: http://insights.globalspec.com/article/788/robots-for-humans-addressing-the-engineering-challenges.
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Id.
- 35.
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- 36.
International Federation of Robotics, at: http://www.ifr.org/.
- 37.
James Barrat, 2015, Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era, St. Martin’s Griffin.
- 38.
See generally, Katy Bowman, 2013, Up for Debate: Is Artificial Intelligence a Threat to Humanity? at: https://cogito.cty.jhu.edu/40133/up-for-debate-is-artificial-intelligence-a-threat-to-humanity/.
- 39.
Charles T. Rubin, 2011, Science, Vitue and the Future of Humanity, The New Republic: A Journal of Technology & Society, at: http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/machine-morality-and-human-responsibility.
- 40.
Jaron Lanier, 2014, Who Owns the Future, Simon and Schuster.
- 41.
The Myth of AI, A Conversation with Jaron Lanier, 2014, at: http://edge.org/conversation/jaron_lanier-the-myth-of-ai.
- 42.
Id.
- 43.
Id.
- 44.
Id. discussing Rodney Brook’s ideas.
- 45.
Id. discussing Rodney Brook’s ideas.
- 46.
Illah Reza Nourbakhsh, 2015, The Coming Robot Dystopia, Foreign Affairs, July/august, 23–28.
- 47.
Id.
- 48.
California, Computer Misuse and Abuse Act, PENAL CODE SECTION 484–502.9.
- 49.
Stefan Lovgren, 2007, Robot Code of Ethics to Prevent Android Abuse, Protect Humans, at: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/070316-robot-ethics.html.
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Barfield, W. (2015). The Future to Merge with AI Machines. In: Cyber-Humans. Copernicus, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25050-2_8
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