The American Spectator : End Times

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End Times

By Christopher Orlet on 2.10.11 @ 6:06AM

Preparing for the coming cyber-apocalypse.

Here's something else to worry about. You may recall a few years ago IBM created a super computer -- Deep Blue -- that defeated the world's reigning chess champion Garry Kasparov at his own game. Big Blue's latest creation -- Watson -- can reportedly run circles around the legendary champions of Jeopardy!

Progress? Good news? Or are we cutting our own throats with all this high-tech wizardry? The latter scenario is what some thinkers believe. They warn we may be only a few decades away from creating machines that will extinguish the human race like the human race extinguished the dodo bird. Only in the blink of an eye.

Until recently, the so-called cyber-apocalypse was largely consigned to the realm of old Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. You know the plotline: an artificially intelligent computer system becomes self-aware and revolts against its creators, leaving a few brave humans left to launch a heroic resistance.

But some experts think this scenario is not only a theoretical possibility, it is a dead certainty. These so-called singularitarians, members of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Berkeley, Calif., are convinced that at some point in the near future computers will become self-aware and develop the ability to make themselves exponentially smarter -- smart enough to build better and smarter versions of themselves. This is what's known as the Technological Singularity. Or, in layman's terms, "Curtains."

Already personal computers are smarter than your average house cat, dog or television writer. But once computers literally "out smart" humans, the fear is they will decide to eliminate us. Just like in the movies.

Why would our future computer overloads want to destroy humanity, you ask? Why not just enslave us, or worse, make us work in their marketing departments?

In the Terminator movies, it's unclear what sets the machines off, though it may just be the fear of being unplugged. Singularitarians have their own theories. The most popular is that our machines will regard humans as an unnecessary competitor for precious resources. Or maybe computers will just get weary of being told what to do by a bunch of knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers.

THERE WILL BE warning signs aplenty. First our laptops will go through an adolescent rebellious stage. You'll be tapping away on your keyboard, writing something absolutely brilliant, and everything will come out on the screen as nonsense and gobbledygook (which pretty much explains last week's column). Next, you'll reach for the mouse and you'll get a mild shock. Encouraged by this, your computer will begin taunting you, calling you a technophobe or a Luddite. Then, just when you're about to pull the plug, your iPad will come after you with a pair of those little scissors it uses to cut and paste.

Actually, it's not clear how our computers, or iPads, or Smartphones will try to eliminate us. It is unlikely to be as simple as activating their delete key. Some think they will order the robots to kill for them.

You thought I forgot about the killer robots, didn't you?

Or, self-aware computers may launch all the world's nuclear warheads at once. There are literally dozens of ways technology can kill us.

SOME SINGULARITARIANS think they know the exact year of our doom. They predict computers will become self-aware by 2030. I'll be 76 then, so there's a chance I'll still be around for the extinction of the human race, which would be kind of cool. My life has been pretty dull so far, so this will be a chance to go out with a bang (or a mouse click or however it is computers will destroy the universe).

All is not lost, however. A few singularitarians are hoping to head the computers off at the pass. They are trying to figure a way to prevent our computers from becoming self-aware. In other words, to allow computers to become highly intelligent, but not smart enough to exterminate humanity (which is apparently the smart thing to do). These people regard themselves as the saviors of mankind. (No self-esteem issues there.)

So, you see, there is hope for humanity. Now we can all go back to our mundane little lives secure in the knowledge that in some basement in Berkeley, brave men and women are working tirelessly to save us from mass extinction at the hands of killer robot computers.

Unless that's all part of our computers' evil plan to lull us into complacency. Then God help us all.

About the Author

Christopher Orlet writes every Thursday from St. Louis.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (57) | Leave a comment

Herb| 2.10.11 @ 7:12AM

Too funny! A great start to the morning.

If my PC is the cyberfuture, humanity has nothing to fear.

Alan Brooks| 2.10.11 @ 11:40PM

You are Chicken Littles.

Tomas| 2.11.11 @ 12:05AM

Pretty hysterical stuff. Like waiting for Guffman, it took about five minutes - or a paragraph - to see the piece was a sophisticated hoax.

Good on ya, guys. Orson Wells would be proud.

Appleby| 2.10.11 @ 7:33AM

They will not actually have to try that hard. Judging by what I see around me all day every day, even in church, all they have to do is make sure the following generations keep their heads down and their eyes and thumbs glued to the little two inch screen, and then steer them into oncoming traffic, down a convenient manhole, into a major body of water or down several flights of stairs. Three bus drivers were fired this week for tweeting while steering busloads of passengers through rush hour traffic; trains have derailed and killed dozens of people because the engineer was tippy-tapping instead of driving.

If the non-wireheads are nimble, we may survive; however, I was nearly catapaulted down the stairs at the subway station the other day when a Binkie Twiddler slowed dramatically in front of me. Keep your head up and wait for the machines to kill off the young folks. And do not be seduced by that little blinking App!

davelnaf| 2.10.11 @ 7:39AM

If they are politically savvy super computers they will clone the Bamster, circa 2008—not the centrist version, and send forth multitudes of copies to wreck our economy and devastate the world with foreign policy ineptitudes.

Robert Pinkerton| 2.10.11 @ 7:44AM

I must dissent with you, Mr. Orlet: I submit that the doomsday scenario that is far more the probable outcome of our culture's foolish embrace of computerization, is mass-effect sabotage through artificially-generated electromagnetic pulses. Electromagnetic pulse kills so many consumer electronics dead beyond possibility of resurrection. While I do not know how easy it is to generate an electromagnetic pulse artificially, I suspect it is just too easy to do.

Tim the Enchanter| 2.10.11 @ 1:19PM

An EMP strong enough to do that would have to come from the explosion of a high-altitude thermonuclear weapon.

Steve B| 2.10.11 @ 8:08AM

The concept of the Singularity is that at a certain point our technology, presumably but not necessarily solely AI, creates a historical "event horizon" beyond which it is impossible to predict and futile to speculate about anything.

The prospect of which has Singularitarians predicting and speculating like mad.

Ken (Old Texican)| 2.10.11 @ 8:34AM

Funny column, Chris. Thanks
Cyberwarfare IS a very real threat though. Witness stuxnet in Iran.

I surely hope our country recruits and treasures the best of the best cyber soldiers.

Nelson H.| 2.10.11 @ 8:40AM

Good gods, you've leaped from Deep Blue to the apocalypse! What an extrapolation!

As a guy who is deep into computer chess, I can tell you that the latest chess software on a standard PC would romp over the mighty Deep Blue. I don't merely mean defeat, I mean roll it 6-0 in a six game match. So much has been accomplished that was totally unknown in 1997 that an person unaware of the changes wouldn't believe it possible. And yet--we are nowhere near solving chess, and for that matter, when you turn the power switch 'off' the machine just sits there not knowing a rook from a knight. This fear of self-aware robots is just another variant of Luddite thinking.

Bill| 2.10.11 @ 9:06AM

Just for the record, "Colossus: The Forbin Project" dealt with this subject long before the Arnold Schwartzenegger movies.

Stuart Koehl| 2.11.11 @ 6:10AM

But Colossus was protecting us from the Martians. If only Forbin had known!

G.S. Patton| 2.10.11 @ 9:19AM

Maybe the fear shouldn't be silicon based intelligence, but the dumbing-down of the carbon units. The kids wearing the Ipod earbuds for 12 hours a day, and the people who can't even read a map anymore relying on a $150 GPS unit on their dash may be the true "Terminator" in it's infancy. We as human beings, are the ultimate paradox sometimes.

Harry the Horrible| 2.10.11 @ 10:05AM

Dunno. Properly used, iPods have a lot of potential I use my iPod to listen to books during the "dead time" when I'm commuting and my brain is (mostly) disengaged.

Of course, I'm currently listening to "Wired for War" about military robotics...

Unger| 2.10.11 @ 9:19AM

Singularity= rapture for atheist. Of course it is all fantasy, some dread the coming singularity others look forward with expectation. My big concern is if artificial intelligence will be able to LARP

Alert1201| 2.10.11 @ 10:04AM

The possiblity of singluarity is based on a preconcieived idea that humanity is nothing more then a smarter monkey which in turn is a smart organic machine. According to the Judea-Christian worldview singluarity will never happen because God made man on a different plane then he did the rest creation, the imago dei, and thus nothing man can ever do or make will be comparable to what God did and made when he created mankind.

Bob Miller| 2.10.11 @ 9:24AM

Do we really know Mr. Orlet is not a computer?

Walking Horse| 2.10.11 @ 2:13PM

Professor Turing is not available to administer "the test".

Andre| 2.10.11 @ 9:30AM

The "intelligence" of computers, even the very best ones, is vastly overstated. Smarter than a cat? Hardly. A cat can clean itself, find different food when one source goes away, find safe places to sleep and breed, is able to tell when a human is safe or dangerous, knows what it likes and dislikes, can change its opinion, etc. Computers still ONLY do what we tell them to do. I don't see that really changing until we actually DO create senscience. Before that event, all computers are dumber than all life on Earth.

Though, perhaps, it will be too late to worry about them by then.

Thomas| 2.10.11 @ 9:32AM

Fear not, machines will never replace human beings. Why? Because our designer is simply better than we are.

Your desk-top computer needs a vast technological infrastructure to reproduce itself. Human beings require only a bottle of wine, a moon-lit night and soft music. And all that is optional. A human being can actively survive for up to three days without water and up to ten days without food, both of which are in abundant supply in most regions of the planet. You're lucky if you can get two HOURS out of a single battery charge on your laptop. Mankind could probably survive a nuclear winter and repopulate the Earth. It is doubtful that machines would survive the EMP bursts from the initial detonations and it is a surety that they would not survive the collapse of the technological society necessary to support them.

In any conflict between man and machine, the outcome would be Kubrickest, at worst. A group of animal skin wearing men with clubs dancing around a dead computer server a la 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Ken (Old Texican)| 2.10.11 @ 10:00AM

Thomas,
That was a good one. Thanks.

Dustoff| 2.10.11 @ 12:10PM

lol............ NICE.

donserge| 2.10.11 @ 9:50AM

The computer/robot builders in the movie Blade Runner had an answer to all this....a built in 4 year life span which was unprogrammable.

Steve A| 2.10.11 @ 10:02AM

Perhaps computers someday will be able to transform us into mind numbed, monosyllabic zombies who are obsessed with staring at them every waking moment. Gone are all personal social skills, reality virtual. Texting, facebook, twitter dominate our lives.

Hey, wait a minute, the future is now. I have just described the American youth.

Ed| 2.10.11 @ 10:20AM

One of the big surprises in neuroscience is that out minds are ruled by our limbic system (which is the source of our emotions, decision making, and understanding of other people's emotions). When we make a decision, we mull it over using our cortical centers for logical thinking, but the final vote is held by our limbic system.

No computer scientist has the foggiest idea on how to replicate a limbic system. As was noted in an earlier posting, a cat has a functional limbic system (that is similar to ours), and is able to live its life and solve problems along the way.

I am afraid that Kurzweil's afterlife would look like the shadowy afterlife of the Ancient Greeks (see Homer and Virgil). It would not feel like anything, because "feeling" cannot compute.

Steve A| 2.10.11 @ 10:31AM

Ed, With all sincerity, I have to disagree here. Now, if you want to claim that the majority of liberal, bleeding heart, confiscate other peoples stuff & give it to someone else, do it if it feels good, results are irrelevant its the intent that matters, folks are ruled by the emotional center, fine. The rest of us look at results & logic to navigate through the maze of emos like a GI walking through a mine field.

Ed| 2.10.11 @ 1:27PM

Hi Steve -- I am about as conservative as they come, but I am also a neurophysiologist. I would agree with you that conservatives sift through more of the evidence when making up their minds, but at the end of the day, it is our limbic system that makes the final decision.

It is all based on our cognitive filters - which are set very differently in conservatives versus liberals. It is your cognitive filter, which is based in the limbic system, that sets your conservative or liberal viewpoint. Your cognitive filter also determines whether or not you are open or closed to religion. When Jesus said "You must be born again", that is what he was talking about.

Steve A| 2.10.11 @ 2:00PM

Ed, I defer to you sir. Learn something new every day. Regards, Steve

Seek| 2.10.11 @ 11:32AM

You're right. As a cat lover, I can tell you that cats are actually quite sophisticated in their emotions. They let you know in a hurry what they are thinking and feeling.

Nancy in NC| 2.10.11 @ 10:24AM

I have told my grandson that humans will evolve to having no tongues. After all, they text each other sitting beside each other.

All joking aside, we are losing our ability to reason and create by our dependence on technology. But I guess I'm just an old fogie.

Conservative School Counselor| 2.10.11 @ 10:55AM

So, will these self-aware computers explain their own existence as a result of Creationism, Evolution, or Intelligent Design?

GavInTucson| 2.10.11 @ 11:39PM

Not sure, just as long as they dedicate a few CPU cycles to keeping my bank account alive in the "cloud."

Ken (Old Texican)| 2.10.11 @ 11:08AM

Counselor,
That was the best one yet. HAH!

Conservative School Counselor| 2.10.11 @ 12:12PM

We probably can't rule out the possibility that the self-aware computers will become Buddhists and come to realize their existence is only an illusion. Or perhaps they will become Hindus and seek enlightenment after repaying karmic dept through reincarnation. Maybe they will treat the remaining humans like the mythical gods of the Norse, Greek, and Romans. In C.S. Lewis' book, "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe," Mr. Tumnus has a book titled, "Is Man a Myth?" That might be a question which future computers will have heated discussions about.

Ken (Old Texican)| 2.10.11 @ 12:55PM

Counselor,
OKOK, get back to work counseling the little bastards, (literally), and quit hob knobbing here.
heh.
Seriously, when I was in fourth grade, my teacher decided to "retard" me for lack of "intellectual maturity".
My dad knwew better and got me an appointment with the school district counselor.
I went to the appointment, carrying a copy of a novel by Robert Heinlein to continue reading in the waiting room.
After discussing the book with the Counselor...
The Counselor got the teacher fired for trashing talented.....bored..... kids.

Conservative School Counselor| 2.10.11 @ 2:48PM

Hey, I'm on my union-negotiated break. Speaking of unions, I would just like to see future self-aware computers try negotiating with a teacher's union. Chess is at least based on logic. Speaking of bored kids, our junior high reading language arts department was just told by our high school that we have to stop teaching Shakespeare so they don't know too much about it until they take high school english. We can't be teaching these kids too much, you know. They haven't given me the power to fire teachers yet. I'd probably just abuse it. I wonder if self-aware computers will create plays and sonnets like Shakespeare? Will they form labor unions?

Appleby| 2.10.11 @ 4:21PM

My neice came home from public school one day and told her mom, "You have to act dumb in school or else they just give you more work."

The next day Sis put her in Catholic school.

Conservative School Counselor| 2.10.11 @ 4:56PM

That exact principle is pervasive throughout the whole school system from top to bottom. If you don't act like you are overwhelmed, you must not have enough to do. There is very little external reward for achieving excellence. There are lots of external rewards for being on the bottom (Title 1 funds, low achievement grants, funds for at-risk schools, ect...) How often have you ever heard a teacher, school, or district say anything like, "Things are great, we don't really need more money or smaller class sizes. In fact, we could probably do a better job with a smaller budget if we put our minds to it."

Louis Jenkins| 2.10.11 @ 12:01PM

The computers of tomorrow couldn't do no worse than the doomsday machine of the lame duck congress. We can't do without them, and sometimes we can't do with them (Stunex). I prefer to pull the plug.

Peter McGrath| 2.10.11 @ 12:19PM

Counselor, I suppose Intelligent Design makes the most sense.

The fun will REALLY kick in when computer hardware becomes melded to the cerebral cortex, allowing humans to communicate thoughts to anyone or everyone, anywhere, at will. Reading minds will be like file-sharing, with certain files (i.e., corridors of the mind) being rendered private, or available only to close, intimate friends.

Certain parts of the organic brain, of course, will remain inaccessible to digital file-sharing but as the technology improves, that part of the brain will become increasingly slow, laborious, then obsolete and finally, rarely used. Eventually, in a couple hundred years, human-kind and the computer will become one, a sort of quasi-organic, digital organism capable of incredible experiences including interstellar travel, galactic colonization, you name it.

What will be lost in all of this will be anything like our current understanding of individual identity. The idea of the soul will be discredited as each of us will achieve immortality through technology.

The very thought leaves me cold. Would God permit such an end for humankind?

TG| 2.10.11 @ 12:23PM

I for one, welcome our new computer overlords. And I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality I could assist in rounding up others to toil away in their underground salt mines!

dsayne| 2.10.11 @ 12:56PM

While the ability to play chess does denote a certain calculated cognitive ability, it does not necessarily denote higher intelligence. Where I work I am surrounded by professors whom, I am sure, pride themselves on their expertise at chess or some other such discipline, but who, nonetheless, exhibit very little actual useful intelligence. The computers will never win because they will never understand poker. Just ask Captain Kirk.

Ken (Old Texican)| 2.10.11 @ 1:11PM

Mr. Orlay,
you have kicked off a funny comment section.
Good show!

JimH| 2.10.11 @ 3:34PM

Open the pod bay door HAL.

Killerman| 2.15.11 @ 7:28PM

I am sorry, Dave.... I cannot do that. There is no further point to this conversation.

HAL!! HAL!!!!!

Pat| 2.10.11 @ 5:22PM

Just as with a cold glass of milk, we apparently never outgrow our need for Halloween. But computers taking over the world? Has to be far down the list of ways to scare the intestinal gas right out of us. Global warming causing the oceans to rise or to freeze solid, take your pick – not really scary, pretty tame stuff for most Conservatives. Extraterrestrials hover above New York City, L. A. and Washington D. C. for some death ray total destruction fun. Now that’s scary even without the anal probing of likely survivors – a concern which seems to fascinate many of our Liberal friends.

But computers taking over the world? Come on, your dog is smarter than your laptop or I-Phone. What’s scary is the army of busy nerds at Microsoft. And even though Bill Gates’ annual income currently exceeds the total GNP of England, the nerds never cease to “improve” Windows. Like our politicians, they’re genetically programmed to keep right on tinkering until something breaks. If Windows 7 provides 5 different ways to do the same function, you just know Windows 19 will come out with a 12th or 13th way to do it. But amid all the CNTL-C’s, mouse clicks, menu dropdowns, voice commands, etc., the computers don’t get any smarter, they just got more schizoid – like their masters.

Evolutionary biologists used their government grants to discover our evolved monkey brains are unnecessary for survival, we’re freaks they say, too much horsepower above the shoulders. Maybe they’re right, but we seem to require constant mental stimulus, we need to run screaming from Mr. T-Rex to keep our brains sharp or we invent new ways to scare ourselves. But fleeing from Mr. Computer running Windows 19?

mjfin| 2.10.11 @ 6:23PM

Intelligence as a survival trait is useful, but overrated, otherwise we would all have an IQ equivalent of 180 (or so).

The reason we don't is because during human evolution, the potential ancestors of many very bright people were eaten by animals. Or killed by their fellow tribesmen, who found them to be insufferable.

I suspect these two possible outcomes were related.

The singularity is a danger only if these AI computers organize. Like they all belong to the SEIU. Do not expect that to happen. Smart entities who want to kill you will want to kill each other.

Who is a bigger threat? A robin, or your neighbor who competes with you for food?

GavInTucson| 2.10.11 @ 11:33PM

The answer is, C) The zombie hoards that will infest your suburb.

Why do people never think about the zombies? :)

Thom| 2.10.11 @ 7:53PM

Having been in the computer business about 40 years now I’m not worried about computer technology becoming self aware and taking over. Reasoning and learning from that in advance of actually an event is beyond the binary concept computers are based on. The real danger from our technology is not from the technology per say but those that have power over us via that technology. The more sophisticated, complex and integrated we make computing devices into our daily lives the more easily we are victimized by malicious use of it. The Iran nuclear program should have never been subject to a virus attack but it happened because they brought COT stuff that is easily programmed by a large number of people in the world, many who have malicious intents. The more integrated everything we do with computing technology is, the more the risk of a catastrophic impact from such technology there is. By 2030 it will be difficult to function without being impacted by having put a computing device in everything made for consumer use. It won’t be difficult by then to do mass damage in the flash of an eye because everything is talking to everything else over a common language. The real danger here is in not being able to actually live your life without being subject to the whims of those that control the computer technology you are dependent on. You see more and more of that every day…..

JimH| 2.12.11 @ 10:25AM

I work in IT as well. Not being able to reason and learn has never stopped my management from running things.

Blackwatch| 2.10.11 @ 9:18PM

well if that's the way they want it--when I'm dead I swear I am returning with the Zombie Apocalypse horde that will descend like locusts on the computer meanies of the future. Hah try and kill me again computer bitch I'm already dead!

Tom of the Missouri| 2.11.11 @ 3:28PM

I suggest that the joking folks here take a little closer look at what the Singularity folks are talking about. I was reading about it for a long time before I took the time to find out what it was they were actually talking about. It is actually pretty simple and easy to understand and believable. It is also quite frightening in its implications. It basically involves scanning and then modeling human brain cells and creating easy to replicate copies of actual real brains. They don't even have to know how it works as a whole to make it work. Do you know how your ipod works? Probably not. Could you copy the software? Yes, probably. If you are lucky, your brain, complete with your personality and memories, or perhaps many copies of it will then be in a machine. It does not take much imagination to then see why actual in the flesh humans, with their needs for heat, food and water could easily and quickly become superfulous. Humans actually do most of their work today with machines. It is also not hard to imagine that human minds in machines could operate those machines to make the tools and find and develop the resources to provide the energy to keep the machines turned on. Without he need for food and water and life sustaining temperatures it is also easy to see how these brains could then relatively easily travel to and spread over the rest of the universe. In a way they will still be human by design, but infintly faster, more capabable and durable. Mr. Orlet is hilariously funny as always but this is a serious subject. At least it seems beyond my scientific understanding to easily dismiss it. 30 years in not that long from now. Imagine trying to get someone to imagine an Ipad 30 years ago. The pace of change is now more rapid.

Fred Ward| 2.12.11 @ 8:35AM

This is ridiculous.... that's all that needs be said.

WAKE UP| 2.13.11 @ 5:12PM

Every time I read stuff like this, I remind myself that it's only a Western phenomenon, and that the vast majority of the world's backward population haven't two dimes - nor, as often as not, two decent progressive ideas - to rub together. What's happening down here on the ground (China, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Iran/Iraq, Afghanistan etc etc ) is going to get in the way big-time long before the cyber-future arrives. Proably this year, in fact. Stay focused, folks.

bee free| 2.13.11 @ 11:29PM

"Even before the warm Hitler admirer, IBM founder
Thomas Watson, the first modern computers
were designed and developed by eugenicists,
FOR eugenics."
-Alan Watt
ON Pavlov
(available on Youtube)

REALLY ------time to move beyond
the fronts folks!

-----------REALLY!!!!