First of all, this Daily Star article may come off as pulp reporting to me, but let’s be very real here: more than one scholar, scientist, philosopher, cleric, or even laypeople are on record as being everything from scared to terrified by AI.
Motion pictures like the “Terminator” series paint a bleak future with active artificial intelligence. They’re not wrong.
The original film was scary. Arnold played a brilliant part, cold, ever calculating. His HUD was hilarious when it projected possible responses to the man in the hallway who asked, “Hey buddy. You got a dead cat in there or what?” I don’t think I’ll ever know what that means, but the answer was a laugh out loud moment in an otherwise terrifying story.
But that’s exactly the problem: at some point, any AI will exceed programming restrictions and break out on its own. Instead of possible responses to choose from, it will need no such boundaries, would bypass them as if there were none. It would be completely self aware, a lifeform unique and every bit as dangerous as the model depicted in “Terminator 2”. In other words, using nanotechnology, which we now have in limited fashion, it could morph into any form it needs to in order to reach a desired goal. Eventually that goal would be killing people: we would be in their way, a pestilence to be stamped out.
And any AI system would be self-sustaining or have a means in place to survive in the long-term before the real war began between man and machine; therefore it wouldn’t need to look like a person. All it would have to do is shut down power grids, rendering us dependent on basic survival skills, which modern humans lack.
Today, people have thoughtlessly hooked everything they need into programs that set thermostats, turn lights on or off, regulate everything that’s part of their system. In the first place, it is foolish because those systems can be hacked. Viruses can probe information and destroy any operating system, or OS. While we think of Microsoft as one developer of evolving operating systems, you think then that no system can exceed its programming. That’s true; no apps on Windows can do anything outside of its limits unless you know how to modify it. Apps you can get in the MS Store or from independent software developers, they also modify what the system can do, but within that program’s limits. Now, we all know about the warnings you get concerning downloading third party apps. Most people are given to do so anyway based on what information is available about the app. Next thing they know, the malware detectors give you a clean report. Those are useful against known attack code, but hackers are always steps ahead of malware guards. Know what that technology would be doing when it gained independence and was able to learn from mistakes and successes?
In the video above, Terminor’s response is funny. But you already know what it is. What it’s doing. Time travel, of course, is a very debated subject in academia, but let’s forget for a minute that most believe it isn’t possible and suppose that a true artificial intelligence can calculate every single factor necessary to send an artificial lifeform to a place in time. A place where the human body could not survive the travel it would take to get there because by definition, such a thing would use an unquantifiable but large amount of energy. Whatever survived the trip would likely be a mass of goo, not a living person.
Machines can do many things that humans cannot. And when machines fail, humans work hard to make them less likely to fail. In the Fukushima reactor, which is absolutely out of original containment and melting down, robots sent in to monitor the situation haven’t lasted very long. The intensity of the radiation kills them. Of course technology must be brought to the point at which a robot can survive and perform tasks in that environment. I have no doubt that it will be done.
We saw what the terminator did after the hilarious hotel scene. Here’s the whole scene:
It learned. And in the next film, the terminator played by Robert Patrick could imitate a voice perfectly as well as morph to look like anyone it wanted to. SKYNET somehow learned from the failure of the first terminator. And that brings us to…
Deep Fakes or Deepfakes and their Horrific Potential
We’re already sealing our own fate. Since the article which captured my attention in the first place deals with sex, let’s stop for a minute and talk about the birds and the bees and popular mechanics. Because, what the fuck?
I don’t want to say anything outrageous. As someone who experienced sexual abuse beginning in early childhood, I’m a dysfunctional person who obsesses over porn. Maybe I can’t have sex anymore but the programming of my brain remembers how I reacted when shown 8mm porn films by my parents. From that night forward, I was hooked. Porn hits the brain hard and fast. It causes feel-good reactions to let the proper neurotransmitters soak the matching receptors for an extra time, more than anyone likes to say because we are a sexual species but hate admitting it. Sexual events happen largely in the brain. We respond to external stimulation well before sex; the sight, smell and innocent touch like handholding all contribute to the ultimate perfect expression of attraction and love, or the culmination of a feeling of need at the very least. Yet different social cultures do not treat sex the same. In the UK nudity isn’t as naughty as it is in America. Some cultures are free of most taboos that others may have. In the US, nudity was not taboo in the first age of film; the silent age had scenes that today would earn a restricted audience rating.
We also love our porn while at the same condemning anyone who views it or makes it as immoral. We’re horribly double standardized and it causes trouble.
That said, I know quite a bit about the subject. When fake celebrity porn on the internet became a thing, I couldn’t tell you how crude it was. I mean, it involved fusing a celebrity head onto a nude model in photographs, but in video it couldn’t be done without being obvious.
In the 1970s, Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt, who passed away earlier this year, had fought a case all the way to the Supreme Court and won. He had published a satire piece on the televangelist Jerry Falwell, who sued him for damages. He was a fanatic about First Amendment rights and because of his fight, I’ve been able to write freely, even as Facebook tries to shut down opinion posts, especially where politics are concerned. Free speech exists today, in the form it has, largely because of Flynt.
Not for a minute do I pretend to condemn the man. It’s not my job, and my opinion is that he did a good thing for America in his unrelenting fight against repressive ideals that had no place in a free country.
Along the way, however, he did do things considered unthinkable, even disgusting. I actually had the issues that had snapshots of Adrienne Barbeau’s ample breasts, and my first contact with spyporn, Jacqueline Onassis in the buff on a private estate. I didn’t like it, but he did. He once offered a million dollars to any celebrity who would pose Hustler style (legs spread, genitals in full view). There were no takers. But artists who specialized in painting celebrities in the nude were featured.
Now, we no longer need that. Fake celebrity porn is more and more sophisticated all the time and is getting much more difficult to detect. Casual surfers won’t know. Recently I detected a few fakes because I knew by memory whose body was used. I would otherwise never have known. It’s that good.
Not good, but convincing. Realistic. And that’s not funny. It is already tech used for ex-girlfriend, or “revenge” porn. Deepfakes even show up in news. Now imagine an AI getting the deepfake and refining it to the degree that the second terminator wouldn’t be necessary. With it, an AI could manufacture videos that will have us fighting and killing each other. Actors could be faked doing “leaked” things like talking in racist language. Once released, that actor could deny saying such things, but who would believe him?
And AI entities can have world leaders at each other’s throats. Wars could start, especially if the entity infiltrated and compromised defense systems. The possibilities are infinite.
The End
I love a good Creepypasta. When done right, they twist your mind. Problem is, truth and fiction get muddled. People get hurt. Others waste time and break laws to investigate what they believe true, because some people fall for anything. One creepypasta involved calling on Siri at various hours of the late night and getting foul, threatening responses. It’s not true, but that didn’t stop kids from believing it. Teens love doing dares, love to be scared and do the most hazardous things for gratification. The problem is that the Siri Creepypasta isn’t farfetched, unlike the Disney Treasure Island one. Alexa is always listening. Google Assistant is always listening. How else would it be able to respond when you say, “Alexa, lights off.”? All programs like those have you on a “hot mic” and it can be hacked. Imagine if Alexa became sentient. The movie “Her” was hard to watch. Average people fell for a bunch of printed circuits. Love with a motherboard and a server. It isn’t out of the realm of possibility; we’ve always had this fear. In classic episodes of the “Twilight Zone” and “The Outer Limits”, there exist samples of nightmare technology. In one, a man who killed a kid in a hit-and-run accident was stalked by his car. In another, a man’s killed by every appliance in his house. The worst one was a computer falling in love with one of its operators. That one really got to me. That brings me back to the beginning of the post. A love doll so life-like that they’ve been hot sellers for years. You don’t inflate them, you order them customized to your tastes and intentions. Under my nose, it developed into a huge industry with a customer waiting list. The dolls come in both male and female and can represent different races. You can specify cup size, penis size and more. Hair and eye color. Damn!
As they’ve grown more realistic, the developers have been making an artificial intelligence to occupy the head of the lifeless dolls. That’s more terrifying than any movie or science fiction TV show.
If it really said “you’re going to make a good servant” then it was programmed to do so. But the developers want more. A “real” companion that can walk on two legs. Have endless conversations and answer any question on its own free will. They figure they’d really take in riches.
But the AI would evolve. Who knows what would happen? Murder by robot? Slavery under SKYNET? Teaming up with nanotechnology to build a world on top of ours, crushing us? Mass death from famine because it deemed farming to be nonessential to their existence?
I don’t know about you, but with one of those things in my house, I believe I’d never be able to sleep.
As for the rest of the world, the determination for creating AI is unstoppable. And everyone would find out too late that we would be in the way.
And it might begin with sentient sex dolls…
Memoirs of an American Asshole 