Aug
6
I have seen “The Matrix”, and I have read numerous fiction on how a day will come when machines will be able to take over the mankind. I hardly think there are many technology savvy people who disagree that such a day will come, its just they differ on whether the day will come soon, or it will take its own sweet time so nobody has to worry about it. I am going to present a very novel viewpoint on this situation. My view is that this day will never come. How did I come to such a conclusion? I would like to thank Ludwig Von Mises’s Human Action for that.
Human Action
Mises gave his theory of Praxeology based on the science of human action. Consider Praxeology to be the Economics which tries to describe the science of human action. To understand Praxeology Mises describes the fundamentals of Human Action. Most modern day economics suffer from misunderstanding of Human Action axioms. Since this article is not about bashing mainstream economics I will move on to what Human Action axioms are.
- Humans have desires.
- Humans have means to achieve those desires.
- Humans act because they believe that by acting they will be able to achieve their ends by the means they have.
That’s it. This in the most simplistic manner explains the whole basis of human action. We have desires, we have means to achieve those desires and we act to achieve those desires by the means we have.
A milkman has a desire of eating cookie. A baker has a desire of drinking milk. The milkman has the means, his milk. The baker has the means, the cookies. So the milkman and baker act to achieve their desires using the means they have and they exchange their milk and cookies.
A milkman wants to fly. But the milkman has no means to achieve his end. So the milkman cannot act to achieve his end of flying in the sky.
A wheat farmer wants an iPhone. The wheat farmer has the means(5 tonnes of wheat) to achieve that end. But the wheat farmer does not act because he desires a house and a doctor’s services more than he desires the iPhone(presuming by buying iPhone he cannot achieve his desire of a house and doctor’s services).
Automaton Action
The problem with the machines taking over theory is that it makes the same mistake what mainstream economists do about human action. They fail to understand that machines cannot have desires on their own. A machine cannot have survivalistic tendency like humans do unless its programmed into it. A machine does not want to feed itself(fuel itself) unless its programmed to do so. If I could write the Machine Action axioms:
- Machines do not have desires unless its programmed to have those desires.
- Machines have means to achieve the desires it was programmed to achieve.
- Machines act because they are programmed to act.
To elaborate the last point, even a machine fully capable of thinking is actually programmed to think, it is programmed to act, it may not be programmed to precisely choose what the act upon, but it is designed to act. Now you could say that what if we program and design machines who think exactly like humans wouldn’t then we will be getting evil machines which try to take over the humans?
The problem with this argument is that humans act because they want to achieve their ends which are their desires. Humans act because they want to rest in leisure at the end of the action. Humans want pleasure. Its true that we can program machines to have desires and feelings just like man, but then this machine would be the weakest machine on the earth. We find machines scary because they are powerful than us. We humans cannot work for more than 8 – 10 hours in stretch(and that too not for long), in fact we work as long as the work of next hour is more costly to us than the leisure of the next hour, so if any individual who is capable of working for 20 – 24 hours without a break, then that individual is much more powerful than us, as he does not have the same desires as us. Fortunately there are no such humans.
On the other hand a machine which acts like humans, which works only for 8 – 10 hours, which shows whims for working is actually quite weak of a machine. Imagine you wake up next morning and your toaster refuses to toast your breads, then you have to spend 20 minutes petting the toaster and then the toaster becomes happy and toasts you some bread. This machine will be so useless for all practical purposes that its better to hire a human for that job. This means that nobody would actually design a machine(and employ) which has the same desires and whims as humans. The whole point of having a machine is to be better than humans.
It is the same reason why machines will never suddenly “develop the logic” to take over the mankind. Machines who have the same desires as humans will not be deployed anywhere. Machines who do not have the same desires as humans will not dream(so to say) to take over the mankind. They will perform the same action which they are programmed to perform.
Bugs
Being a programmer myself I know its nearly impossible to write a code which has no bugs. Even long after you have developed the code, and deploy it in real world, you still will find a few bugs here and there. So is it possible that some machine gets a bug(or some logic which the programmer did not see) and the machines conclude that they need to enslave the human race to serve their purpose. Machines will still be performing their original intended task, but at the same time they will be harming the mankind. Lets say you created bots which dig for oil, and then found out that Saudi Arabia has oil in it so they decided to invade Saudi Arabia for oil, or they started to steal oil from somewhere where they shouldn’t.
Although this threat is quite realistic, a bug which makes robots take over mankind is highly unlikely. If a company deploys 10,000 robots in the households all over, and suddenly a bug causes them all to take over their masters simply shows how weak the programming of those bots are. Since the threat of robots harming human is really high therefore the robot companies will spend extensive amount of money on the logic ensuring the safety of humans. The probability of a bug causing this is really really low. The bugs which are more probable and might still damage the humans are, bugs which causes robot to put the baby into the laundry chute, instead of on the cradle. And these bugs are merely accidents and there is no escape out of it. The threat is no more than accidental gun deaths, pets killing their masters accidentall etc etc.
Virus
Now comes the issue of someone actually programming a machine or a robotic army to kill and destroy all humans. Or some robot which hacks into pentagon’s robots and makes them initiate nuclear attacks. Although logically its very possible. But the reason why this will not be a wide scale effect because of the fact that the defending machines will also be equally powerful and will have the same resources at their disposal. A computer virus is a program written specifically with the intent to harm other softwares. A computer virus can be written which hacks in and stops all the life supporting systems in hospitals, killing thousands and thousands of people. But if you look around, you will find that its not happening. Hackers(which are smart humans) cannot break into Pentagon’s servers and initiate nuclear war.
Even if a hacker can make use of a bug and enter into the deepest level of Pentagon security, the sophisticated systems are programmed to handle a major breach by using human elements and mixing them together. If a hacker can write a robot which can think for itself and continues to hack into the security, then the Pentagon can also write a bot which can think for itself and defend itself. So eventually the whole scenario will be no different than the current viruses vs anti-viruses war. Its been on since a long time and there is no end of the virus vs anti-virus war. Some people will always program their bots with malicious intentions to attack and take over the other robots, but then the robots programmed to defend and fix the infected robots will be equally good and efficient in managing the problems.
Conclusion
There will be a lot more deaths(and lives saved) by the machines, by bugs, accidents, viruses etc etc in the coming time. But the threat of machines taking over mankind is way overblown. Just like your internet banking account is protected by a software and there are malicious software out there always trying to hack into it, there will be real robots trying to rob a bank, but then the banks will also have real robots protecting itself. We have a web server software which serves websites all day long, and just like it is programmed not to start acting up on itself, in future we will have an automaton which is programmed not to start stealing money at his job as a bank cashier. The rogue robots will be as successful as the current hacking softwares in damaging our economy and infrastructure.
Related Posts
1 viewsNo Responses to “Can machines take over the mankind?”
Leave a Reply
GP Says:
August 26th, 2009 at 6:08 pmI guess its not impossible to have machine which can think for itself. Currently, we cannot have advanced robots which
can think like humans or having human emotions ( like the way they shown in i-ROBOT movie) but still I guess its possible.
Also, if you talk about purely cyborgs ( composed of human brain/hands + mechanical parts) then how difficult it would be for a cyborg to
think on its own ? ( assuming that it was fitted with brilliant scientist brain?) ..Again - “taking over mankind” argument shud be calibrated in some perspective
and I guess you must have some sort of destruction level in your mind coz certainly it would be too big to think of - entire genocide of humans by machines/virus ( like they depicted in - “last man on Earth” movie)
But yeah one thing is sure - They need to have advanced brains and thinking level ( like they had in “Transformers” movie) to take over planet earth.
I mean — if cloning is possible then why not “Time Machine” or “highly advanced robots” who can outsmart humans? ( but yeah - Surely they need to be programmed by highly advanced machine/robot :)..who knows may be by some unknown living things on some other planet :)( i.e. if u do belive in SETI project )
renegade_division Says:
August 27th, 2009 at 4:12 amLook you got it wrong, I didn’t say we can never have machines which can think or machines which cannot outthink humans, all I am saying is we will never have machines taking over the humans(or the chances are really low). Reason is simple that for a machine to have the desire to take over the humans first you need to put in the desire of achieving something like that.
What we do whenever we imagine a future development of machines is, we replace humans with thinking machines which are nothing but humans in every aspect of their brain but machines in terms of their body. The problem is why would humans make a toaster which can think for itself and create toasts for you every morning, but requires petting, and spending time with it, or a toaster which gets hurt if you say nasty things to it on its face, or if you kick it it gets offended and stops producing toasts. After all if you are giving a human brain to a toaster then he would have all those whims.
My point is nobody would create a technology like that because there is no need, its like having a Pet for a toaster. Instead of that, if something like that is actually needed then people would get a dumb toaster like we have right now and have a person use it.
Similarly if lets say President was given robotic security guards(to reduce the human causalities) which can think everything, then the question arises wouldn’t try stage a coup by killing the President and taking over or something like that. The truth is if you created robots which could think to provide ultimate security to the President why would you install a human mind in it, yes you need them to process all the information and surroundings like humans but then why would you give them the desire like human? Would you create a robot which will have a desire to go back to his family after work and spend time with his kids and watch sports? Would you give that robot a robot wife which wants fancy jeweleries?
My point is robots serving the president will have all the smartness of humans which currently machines don’t have, and they will not have all the weaknesses of humans. Since they don’t have human weaknesses they cannot be persuaded like humans or motivated to do other things like humans.
Yes you could persuade a robot by logic telling him that killing the President would save the country(like how it happens in the movie ‘Eagle Eye’) but the question is wouldn’t that be a safety concern which can be determined in advance and be dealt with by the programmers? If you put your hand in a table fan you could get seriously hurt, so the table fans are enclosed in a mesh so that you cannot put your finger in it and get hurt. This was the safety measure the company which first created table fans thought of and built. Yes you can still unscrew the mesh and get hurt, but now you are hacking a robot to do that.
I mean currently Air Force One can be hacked into to burst into flames in mid-air, but it doesn’t really happen.
Yes from time to time hijackers hijack a machine and make it kill thousands of people(9/11) and this would be exactly the case with a robotic future too. But this doesn’t mean it will happen on a really wide scale and all the robots will reprogram themselves to turn against us. The only way scenarios depicted by most of the Sci-fi movies where machines take over the mankind would come true if:
1) We create a human-robot(one kind of robot) and all the robots out there are the same machine.
2) This Robot has feelings exactly like humans, it has desire to reproduce(of his own kind), it has a desire to achieve its ends, it can set his own ends, that is it can value things like how we do.
3) This robot eventually develops a desire to take over the mankind for whatever logic, it could be merely a desire to survive on its own by farming humans(like in Matrix), it could be a desire to take over the mankind like in I’Robot, it could be a bug in the system which makes it think that by eliminating the executive branch of USA it will be doing its duty of serving mankind in a better way(like in Eagle Eye).
4) We never guess that this could happen so we never put safeguards against it, or even if we put safeguards against it somehow its all overridden through logic.
All these conditions should happen, even if one of the conditions are not satisfied the chances of machines taking over is reduced greatly. For example if Apple iBots aren’t deployed everywhere in the world and Microsoft mBots have equal share then if iBots rebel then mBots will fight them back, and we won’t be taken over.
If any of our robots are programmed bots with less intelligence but higher efficiency(like there are bots which have no desire like humans have) then these bots will kick the butts of feel-bots(bots which have feelings).
IF the bots develop a logic by which they want to take over us, it really has to be not foreseen by us. And I am not saying its not possible, we always make buggy code, but the bugs rarely damage us on a major level. Yes someone can discover a bug by which they can launch a virus which turns all the robots against us(but then this is a human behind it, not a bot with desire to control the world, even if it is a bot who has such a desire its not a freak accident its creator knew what the bot is going to do), then it is still not unforseen because we can give the last handle to humans for critical operations(like if a bot wants to launch missiles then it must take human input). A bot given the task of controlling a Wheel ride in an amusement park will not be networked(so remote hacking is not possible) also it won’t really be a human-bot doing that job, it would be a very intelligent machine not interested in having desires).
GP Says:
August 27th, 2009 at 1:59 pmI totally agree with your points which meant “Robots created/programmed by humans — >so they bound to have bugs/weaknesses — >which can be tackeled by another robots/progarms i.e. just like antivirus new updates — > so robots can’t overtake humans”
I also agree with your point which meant “Why wud human wants o create robots with touch of human emotions as they will end up behaving like humans” -> I totally agree.
But I guess you missed my earlier point i.e. about - Advanced robots from other planet ( i.e. storyline of “Transformers”)
If we have that kind of advanced machines ( again - I am not talking abt creation/programmed by humans). Let say, advanced robots created by aliens to invade planet earth / destroy mankind ..possible :)?..(i.e. just like Keanu Reeves did in “the day the Earth Stood Still” but he/she wasn’t human and neither completely a machine.)
renegade_division Says:
August 27th, 2009 at 2:52 pmOk lets now consider aliens who might invade our earth and make us their slaves or just kill us all. IF their machines come over and take over us then there is nothing we can really do(which isn’t what the point of this article is).
But the truth is that any alien machinery which comes to our earth is not guaranteed to work here. Just like if Pakistan created tanks and they suddenly sent them all to Russia to fight, the Pakistani tanks aren’t made to survive Siberian winter, why? Because nobody in Pakistan had an idea of a winter like its there in Siberia. The Russian tanks may not be able to survive Iraqi summer unless the Russian tanks were built by keeping Iraqi desert in mind. Indian tanks may or may not work in Africa.
My point is that you really have to count for unknown territories, so aliens really have to send their machines to work on Earth terrain they will have to first count on their weapons working here.
Secondly, why would an alien race want to take over earth? Again we do the mistake of imagining them as Humans instead of some alien race. If aliens are exactly like humans(in thinking and behavior), the first question is why would they just wanna invade us and colonize us? If we found an alien race somewhere in the universe which is much less advanced then our race then would we first think of invading them or our first reaction would be to communicate with them and understanding them?
The point is, aliens could be in any form. They could be how we imagine 99% of aliens in sci-fi movies(with some sort of language, cool technologies and even superpowers(ET, Superman)). Or they could be our animal counterparts. They don’t speak, they just react to stimuli. They might not even have to eat us, they are gasses which surround us, absorb our energy from our skin and move on. They may or may not think. It could be any of those things. For all we know they could be stones. They could be humans but on LSD where they visualize way more stuff than us they could say UV,IR rays or they may not see whatever we see.
Realistically speaking any alien race which is so advanced than our human race that they come here first, realizes that Earth is one of the rare things which exists in the universe. If we are the first specie they found, they will not just take over us and make us slaves. They might do that if they have colonized many other planets and enslaved them in which case our problem is much more than just fighting this race. If any advanced race discovers us first thing they would do is to try to talk to us and find out more about us.(and no they wouldn’t care about giving amnesia pills to make us forget stuff, why would they care).
GP Says:
August 28th, 2009 at 7:50 amwhy would an alien race want to take over earth? Again we do the mistake of imagining them as Humans instead of some alien race.
==> I guess they are reasons - Earth is full of plenty of resources with more suitable survival conditions. ( Not extremity of fluctuating climatic changes). Also, aliens could also possess this problem of survival or population explosion which makes them compell to search for another
planet in universe to make their habitat. Apart from that - they could also possess this hunger for more n more power and super ambition to rule on universe by establishing their regime on different planets in universe…right?
Regarding your point of “survival capability of them or their machines on planet earth” - I would say - why not?..how difficult would it be for advanced race to adapt on planet earth?( i.e. considering fruitful survival conditions on planet earth. I know it would be difficult for things which are adapted to survive in extreme weather conditions
but then - that’s where “evolution” comes into picture. They can adapt.
“If we found an alien race somewhere in the universe which is much less advanced then our race then would we first think of invading them or our first reaction would be to communicate with them and understanding them?”
==> I guess it depends on your leadership. Again communication could be barrier if we think US style governance :).Where they prefer to deal with people on their own terms. On similar lines it also depends on alien leadership i.e. hostile/civilized curious/intrusive ..all depends on leadership and their ultimate goal. If they are just bunch of curious entities which want to explore species on different planet then - “we will be fine” but if they are power hungry race who wants to establish their regime on different planets then we have an issue :)
renegade_division Says:
August 28th, 2009 at 4:08 pm@GP Said:
See as I said before, if evolution is correct then whichever alien specie we will encounter will be developed in the environment of their home planet. Their chances of being like us solely rely on the chance of having an Earth like environment somewhere in the Universe. We look at the universe and we never find any planet with livable conditions. It could happen that our universe is just really small compared to what lies outside it. We could be a lab experiment of another alien specie. But the truth is, if there is an alien specie which is so huge then they will not need our planet for colonization. Similarly there could be planets which are really really small, so small that the creatures born there are of the size of our ants. They may be smarter than us, but they are too small(I read a novel once where the aliens are actually extra-terrestrial plantation. They came in planes dropped themselves on our earth and started growing everywhere. The point is that we are talking about way too many co-incendences here. For them to be able to live on Earth they should be having a planet of more or less the same size as earth.
If that specie lives on Jupiter they will start flying all over the place, if they lived on Mercury then their bones will be crushed in our atmosphere. Secondly, they should feel exactly as home on our planet. Have you seen how aliens in movies who come to Earth almost never need spacesuits. How come we cannot survive in even a single planet we have discovered, but the aliens seem to be making first contact but without any space suit for themselves. They never have gravity problems, you will never see them eating or drinking. They are so easily adjusted to 12 hour day night cycles. They don’t find it too cold or too hot here.
But if all the presumptions about this future alien race are made that this race is so god damned advanced that they can very easily live here, can’t they live on their own planet by making skyscrapers?
If they need fuel, can’t they just mine other planets? How about nuclear energy, all they need is uranium which can be found all over the universe(its not organic or carbon based). If they need Iron again its pretty commonly found over the universe.(I might be wrong about these things but then my Chemistry knowledge says there is nothing so fancy about these elements that they can only be found on earth, the only reason we exist on earth is because we are complicated carbon creatures, but basic carbon can be found anywhere).
Power and ambition arguments are just very hard to swallow. Earlier we were dealing with survival argument but now you are talking about power and ambition. Now these are complicated human emotions. I would understand why a bunch of Dinosaurs would try to take over us, but saying that they want to take over us because they are power hungry is stupid. I mean it could also be possible that they feel more emotions than what we feel. We feel anger, love, hatred, jealous which animals don’t feel, it could happen that for this specie we are the animals. In cartoon series American Dad there is an episode where they ask the alien Roger who lives with the family on why is he so mean to other people, so in one episode he just stops being mean, and it turns out if he does not be mean then his body starts secreting this poisonous element which might kill him(he becomes really sick at the end of it).
What I am trying to point out is the folly of Sci-fi alien invasion movies. Most of these movies imagine humans which are really advanced and they try to take over us. The aliens might look different speak a diff language might even have telepathic capabilities but they never go beyond that. It becomes very important to imagine their spaceships traveling at the speed of light, and then we also have to imagine them to have lifespan long enough that they can survive a trip to Earth. I mean if they were 200 light years away from us then a race with average life span 70 years cannot survive a trip to earth.
Even if they are advanced enough to freeze their people so that they can survive a trip 200 years long, in 200 years their own people(who cannot be frozen) are long dead. Imagine Columbus went on a trip to this planet 200 light years far from us, by 2000 AD he will be back after spending 20 years on that planet in unfrozen place.
The question is would that really be a trip to a place 200 light years away from us or a time travel trip to 400 years ahead of Earth. When he comes back instead of sharing what he learnt about the other specie he would be learning more about ours and what happened in last 400 years.
Similarly, if an alien probe ship came here in 1800s to find out whether they can colonize us or not, he took all that information and went back and by now we are into space age already. Presuming he just reached to his planet, that means their forces will take another 200 years to come to Earth and who knows by then where would we be.
GP Says:
September 3rd, 2009 at 5:33 pmSorry..just seen ur reply on this post./ok..I got what u said with current limited human perception.
First of all, - when we say highly advanced aliens then it also means
1) They are not “animals” who lack the ambition/power to rule the world. ( which humans do simply_bcoz_their_EQ is superior than animals so its not difficult to imagin superiority of EQ level advanced aliens )
2) Your argument about “distance problem ( i.e. being way to far!… so many light years hence, wud take longer to reach to earth and ageing issues”) can be easily refuted by considering possibility of “Advanced spaceships which cross so many light years in few days”( yes advanced aliens cud have those :) ) which means
“ageing issue automatically resolved? ” 3) You also questioned their survival/adaptibility in earth’s atmosphere - ok..i wud say - “why you want to label them organic or even try to categorize them as some sort of biological species composed of carbon / organic material like other living species on planet earth?”
— I mean why can’t they be composed of such unique material which will help them to turn into any form which can survivein Earth’s atmospherics condition? (remember “shape shifting” ability of Sylar in “Heroes”? ..)
My point is - When you talk abt advanced beings/aliens then obviously you need to see them in advanced forms( with superhuman abilities ..right? :) )