Science May Soon
Create A Real Frankenstein Monster
The Hollywood film "AI," an abbreviation for "artificial intelligence,"
is about a child robot controlled by a computer that thinks like
a human brain. The film's unique plot is about a robotic child that
is programmed to love, and the dilemma humans have in attempting
to return the love of a machine.
This film may be closer to reality than most people realize.
A Russian scientist says he is worried just how the world will use
a newly developed artificial brain that has the same intellectual
potential as a human.
Vitaly Valtsev said he believes this new artificial brain, created
in Russia, could be turned into a Frankenstein monster if it is mistreated.
"This machine needs to be trained like a newborn child," Valtsev
said in an interview with Interfax news agency. "It is extremely
important for us to make it a friend, not a criminal or an enemy."
Valtsev knows, just as Einstein knew when he developed the formula
that led to harnessing atomic energy, that any invention with the
potential for improving the human condition, also can be used as
a weapon for human destruction.
Governments have a way of seizing such devices and using them to
make weapons of war. Big business, which also has the financial capability
of utilizing such information, always attempts to use it to exploit
the masses.
Instead of seeing intelligent robots designed to relieve us of daily
drudgery, military leaders might use the computerized brain to create
soldiers of war. Industrial leaders could replace workers with more
robots in factories. Machines that think would be considered expendable.
But there could be another, even more ominous side to this coin.
Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking warns that because of the speed
of advances in computer technology, he foresees a time when intelligent
machines will be smarter than humans. He said he believes they would
have the capability of taking over the world.
Hawking is not joking about this.
Because technology is advancing so fast, Hawking said "computers
double their performance every month." He warned that humans, in
contrast, are developing much more slowly. They are either going
to change their DNA and develop the capability of using the full
potential of their brain, or be left behind.
"The danger is very real," Hawking said.
The Russians say their neuro-computer is based on the workings of
the human brain cell and can out perform previous brain models. They
have utilized pioneer findings in neurophysiology and neuromorphology
to produce a machine that really thinks, according to Valtsey.
He said the Russian team succeeded where others have failed because
they used a model of the neurons in the brain when they built their
computer. Earlier efforts to create advanced artificial intelligence
failed because scientists tried to create a machine using an old
model of the neuron taken from the spinal cord.
While all of this research promises to open interesting new doors
to the future, it also puts a radical new twist to a moral question:
what is life?
If a robot can think, reason and possess memory and communicate like
a human, replicate itself and even surpass human intelligence, is
it alive? That it may not contain that spark we humans like to refer
to as a soul should not make a difference in determining issues of
civil rights. Those of us who can see human auras, or a spray of
light emitted by living beings, have been aware in recent years that
some humans without souls are presently walking on this planet. Their
numbers have been growing.
Thus the question, would there be a difference between a human without
a soul, and a robot that thinks as well as a human?
And if the robot is to be determined alive, when will that life begin?
Will it occur the moment a switch is thrown turning the machine on?
Or will it occur at some later time, while data is being fed into
the machine's complex computer system that functions like a brain?
Also to be considered: what are the consequences of disposing of
a worn-out or old intelligent robot to make room for a new, smarter
model? Is the trashing of a thinking robot an act of murder? Will
the mere act of throwing a switch that turns off this computer be
a criminal act?
We can't help but remember Hal, the computer brain that went psychotic
and had to be shut down in the classic Arthur C. Clarke story "2001."
The struggle between man and machine on that space craft may have
been a prophetic warning of things to come.
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