Possibly bad science

Back in the 1930's, some scientists used to worry about the uses to which nuclear energy, which their work was going to make available, would be put. I dare say that some of them actually made a career move into botany to avoid the issue - but enough carried on to take us to where we are now, with a rather mixed balance sheet for matters nuclear.

While now, some scientists worry about the uses to which AI flavoured technology is going to be put, although the CEO's of companies like Google, Amazon and Apple, which stand to make a great deal of money out of it, wax enthusiastic and optimistic. Just think of all the good stuff that we are going to be able to do with it.

And there is a lot of good stuff, for example, better than human grade, real time translation into English, of the words of the leader of North Korea. Mind control of prosthetic limbs, maybe even of organs.

Nevertheless, I am in the worrying camp. I am very doubtful that we, as a species, are going to make much of a fist of managing the blurring divide between human activity and machine activity. Of managing the colonisation of vast swathes of what were satisfying and satisfactory employment opportunities by robots. Will we just spend our time on earth knocking back recreational drugs designed and manufactured by robots? While millions of other people continue to starve and to die of unpleasant diseases in Africa?

And what about the colonisation of the minds of the robots by the bad guys? What about the AI enhanced sex toys about to roll off the production line of the people at reference 1 [redacted] and featured in yesterday's Guardian.

I don't suppose that we are going to stop it, any more than nuclear energy was stopped. The theories and the science are out there - and they are exciting. Millions of people - including me, in my own small way, are at it.

The ancient Greeks clearly knew a thing or two when they wrote the story of Pandora's box. Not to mention Homer who recycled it as the story of Aeolus and his bag of winds. Not to mention the chap who wrote the story of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. With the humans taking the plunge, with rather mixed results again, in all of them.

With thanks to the late Cranach for the original painting and to the Courtauld Institute for its image. A picture I am rather fond of and I think I have used it before.

Reference 1: [redacted]