HAL Redux: The Threat of Intelligent Machines

Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey anticipated space travel with the voyage of the spacecraft Discovery to Jupiter. Movie space travel now seems dated, but the film-makers anticipated a question that has gotten more pressing: What kind of problems might arise when very smart computers are introduced into the human environment? HAL, the conversational, artificially-intelligent, supercomputer which controls the Discovery demonstrates one possibility. HAL suffers a fault, comes unglued in a very human and artificially intelligent way, and kills all of the crew members except for Dave, the mission commander, who manages to survive and shut down the rogue computer.

HAL (while refusing to allow Dave back into the ship): “I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that…. This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it…. I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.”

HAL (to Dave as he proceeds with shutdown): “I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you.”

A little more than a decade later, in 1992, the computer scientist and science fiction writer Vernor Vinge popularized the notion of a moment called the Singularity, when smarter-than-human machines would cause rapid change that would bring about the end of the “human era.”

In 2000, William Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems and respected computer architect, found this vision plausible and began speaking and writing about the dark possibilities of unregulated technological advances.

Concern about the rise of intelligent machines continues, and the NY Times recently reported on a private conference, held earlier this year, which brought together a group of leading computer scientists, artificial intelligence researchers, and roboticists to discuss the need to place limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems. They were responding to the resilient notion that intelligent machines and a.i. systems might run amok.

Participants noted that advances in artificial intelligence have the potential to:

¶ Create profound social disruptions

¶ Destroy a wide range of jobs

¶ Have dangerous consequences, given that robots that can kill autonomously will be among us soon and that there are many possibilities for criminals to exploit artificial intelligence systems

The hoped-for outcome of the conferences would be:

¶ An assessment of the possibility of “the loss of human control of computer-based intelligences”

¶ A look at the associated economic, legal, and ethical issues

¶ An estimate of possible changes in human-computer relations (“Open the pod door, HAL.”)

¶ Recommended research guidelines to avoid catastrophe, such as conducting research in secure laboratories

The report of the conference, which was organized by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, will be published later this year.

Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man

Why the Future Doesn't Need Us, by Bill Joy

Technological Singularity

Driving Distractions: Devices Compromise Safety

Do you talk on the phone or text when you drive? Do you fiddle with your navigator or stereo or other devices? Driving distractions caused by cell phone calls and texting and by the increasing array of automotive gadgets have become a serious problem.

Recently, as I was waiting for a light at a busy Boston intersection, a huge mobile crane navigated a left turn past me. I looked up at the driver as the crane lumbered past and saw an otherwise competent looking guy talking on his cell phone. At first I was taken aback, but then I thought, well at least he's just talking and not texting.

A recent NY Times series on driving distractions showed the dangers of distracted driving, the failure of state legislators to respond, the withholding of cell phone safety data by a federal agency, and the results of a study on truck driver texting. Here are a few of the points made in the articles:

Drivers using cell phones are four times as likely to cause a crash as other drivers, with about the same likelihood as intoxicated drivers with an .08 percent blood alcohol level.

Research shows that using hands-free devices may be as dangerous as holding a phone because the conversation distracts drivers from focusing on the road.

A study of texting by truck drivers found that texting made their collision risk 23 times as great.

A Harvard study estimated that cell phone distractions caused 2,600 traffic deaths every year, and 330,000 accidents that result in moderate or severe injuries.

A 2007 NHTSA study estimated that at any time during daylight hours in 2007, 11 percent of drivers were using a cell phone.

A Nationwide Mutual Insurance survey found that 81 percent of cell phone owners talk on phones when driving but considered themselves safe drivers, although nearly half said they had been hit or nearly hit by a driver talking on a phone.

Although cars and roads have gotten much safer, car accident fatalities have stayed at the same level over recent years, apparently because of the distracting devices we use in our cars.

The articles:

• Drivers and Legislators Dismiss Cellphone Risks
• U.S. Withheld Data on Risks of Distracted Driving
• Cabbies Stay on Their Phones Despite Ban
• In Study, Texting Lifts Crash Risk by Large Margin

Ferrari Fever: The 458 Italia

Ferrari has announced the new 458 Italia. This two seater will be introduced in September at the Frankfurt Auto Show and is powered by a 4.5 liter, 562 hp V8 which will take it from zero to sixty in 3.4 seconds and to a top speed of 202 mph.

Price is not announced, but will probably approach $200k. (That's about $1000 for each mile per hour of top speed. What if a $25k Honda would only go 25 mph?

It's billed as a replacement for the F430, so I think I'd better go look in the garage and see if I've got one of those 430's that I'll want to trade up. (pause) No, nothing out there. I think I'll pass on it. I'd just get into trouble with something that fast. And expensive. Maybe you'll let me drive yours once in a while.

Running Latte: The Urban Dictionary

I subscribe to Word of the Day from dictionary.com. Every day I'm e-mailed an interesting word which varies from familiar to vaguely familiar to unknown . But, familiar or not, these daily e-mail messages give me the feeling that I'm maintaining my vocabulary. I like to write simply and concisely but, hey, I'm a writer, so more words must be better. Here's an example of a recent dictionary.com Word of the Day:

glabrous \GLAY-bruhs\, adjective:

Smooth; having a surface without hairs, projections, or any unevenness.

This species has a bluish-tinged body completely covered in white flecking in the typical species, though completely glabrous green variants are also seen without any of the body flecking. -- Kevin G. Belmonte, "The woolly Astrophytums", The Philippine Star, June 6, 2009

Glabrous is from Latin glaber, "smooth, bald."

And now I have, in glorious counterpoint (koun'tr-point', A contrasting but parallel element, item, or theme) the Urban Dictionary. Described recently in the NY Times as providing "unruly, unlexicographical but surprisingly useful offerings" and as the "online open-source dictionary of slang."

I signed up immediately, and I now get another daily e-mail containing the Urban Dictionary Word of the Day. The two daily words could hardly be more different, and here are a few examples of the urban variety:

running latte

Showing up late to work because you stopped for coffee along the way.

I told them I got stuck in traffic, but really I was running latte.

DWT

Driving While Texting. Operating a motor vehicle while texting friends on your cell.

"Gina almost killed us driving over here, she was DWT. I finally grabbed the phone out of her hand before we wrecked."

Note: The Urban Dictionary, while often amusing, is a collection of slang and street language which contains many off-color terms and definitions that I wouldn't include here, and which you might not find amusing.

The Urban Dictionary

Street Smart: Urban Dictionary

Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects

Will Rogers was a famous vaudevillian, humorist, commentator, and actor who starred in 71 movies (the majority of them silent films) and had a syndicated newspaper column.

He was born in 1879 in Oklahoma Indian Territory, and was 1/4 Cherokee. He liked to joke that his ancestors didn't come over on the Mayflower, but they met the boat. He died in 1935 on a round-the-world trip when his small plane crashed near Barrow at the northern-most tip of Alaska.

I only know what I've read about him, but he seems like the best kind of comedian… the kind whose jokes are as wise as they are funny. Two of my favorite Will Rogers quotes, in addition to the one in the title of this post, are these two:

An ignorant person is one who doesn't know what you have just found out.

Everything is funny, as long as it's happening to somebody else.

I wish I'd said that. Thanks, Will.

Cinema Violente

Scanning the cable movie listings recently I was struck by the collective violence in the short descriptions of that night's movies.

Documentaries and animations and comedies were there, Horton the elephant was even there, but they were overwhelmed by an onslaught of violent language: killer, murder, tragic, sadistic, relentless, vicious, violent, mutilated, brutal, amoral, gruesome, psychotic, hideous, and on and on.

The majority of the films were action-oriented and murderous. I'm as used to, and immune to, this stuff as anybody who watches movies, but that night it reached a critical mass. So I decided to extract a selection of descriptive phrases from those cable movie listings to serve as a contemplation on entertainment in our culture.

The extract that most caught my attention with its bizarrely mundane presentation of the plot was this: "His drinking starts to interfere with his assassination duties...." So, is this a fall-down-drunk-and-couldn't-hit-the-side-of-a-barn comedy? Or are assassins now presented as skilled high achievers -- as long as they manage their drinking?

I planned to list some of the other phrases I extracted from the movie listing to show how they are individually more or less commonplace, but how they collectively describe a film industry and a culture drunk on violence. (There's that drinking problem again.) But I think we've all seen enough of that stuff.

Instead, here's a video essay on how the mpaa film rating system is much more tolerant of violence than of sexual content in films.

Blind to the Rear: Backing-up Accidents

Ever looked out the back window of your vehicle and thought about all the things that you couldn't see back there? Blind spots vary, but, unless you're sitting on a motorcycle or golf cart, you obviously can't see everything that’s behind you. However, you may be surprised at how large blind spots can be, and truck and SUV blind spots can extend for 30 feet or more. And those blind spots are a big hazard for little people who play in driveways.

A recent National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study says that in 2007 about 14,000 people were injured and 221 people were killed in backing-up accidents. The study found that such accidents accounted for one-fifth of all fatalities in accidents that occur in driveways, parking lots, and on private roads, the category of "non-traffic accidents." Kids and Cars says that backing-up accidents cause almost half of non-traffic fatalities of children.

The NHTSA study is part of a process to establish rules for rear-view visibility in cars, SUVs, and vans. In advance of these guidelines, vehicle owners can install systems to provide a warning or a rearward view. Sensing systems, often marketed as parking helpers, can provide audible alerts to warn of objects behind a vehicle, and rear-facing cameras can show what is directly behind a car using its own display or the vehicle’s navigation screen.

The NHTSA only recently began to study non-traffic accidents, and says it plans to continue doing so. And I'm going to start looking behind my vehicle before I back out of the driveway.

The danger of blind zones