Hello Dave, I am doing your job now Dave...Dave?...Put down the spanner Dave!
(Steps onto Soap Box)
Artificial Intelligence, there is so much digital diarrhoea going around about A.I. taking over the world that it is enough to make me pull the plug on my analog typewriter. Is there really a threat of digital Pokemon doing my taxes, smartphones replacing bus drivers or Kindles becoming the next Playboy centrefold! Not bloody likely and here is why.
No matter how smart a robot or smartphone is, they are only as smart as the programmer who typed their code. They can not think outside their code, only within the parameters issued by the programmer and the program. All those zeros and ones are the walls and safety net that stops an Apple iPad from grabbing a shotgun and blowing your brains out!
The only way a computer or robot can take over humanity, is if there is a human behind it, controlling it, a puppet master. Or if someone makes the mother of all typing errors and turns your Pool Kirby into a Nuclear Despot (eg:- Mars MCO going poof because someone still worked in feet and inches and not cm’s and meters.). But a computer or calculator thinking outside its programming is impossible, again unless someone added something into those parameters to allow it to come to the conclusion that killing off humanity is a good thing.
But where our real A.I. problem dose come from, is from Industry and Commercial corporations replacing humans with machinery, all under the guise of making our lives simpler and for safety. The true reason is not to our benefit but to the corporate dollar, you see, a human workforce long term costs are far more expensive than the total long term costs of buying and maintaining smart machines.
And Smart machines are not better nor more efficient than humans, that is just an excuse. For example, my wife worked for a company that had up to one hundred people working on a conveyor belt, removing rubbish from a food product. The company replaced the one hundred people with one machine and one operator, because it was more faster, more efficient and less mistakes. The truth, in 8 years that machine has lost the company clients (last toll, 23 clients. They are now bankrupt and are in the process of being bailed out) because of poor product, late with product deadlines, three known cases of food product being poisonous. Where as the original workforce was never late with deadlines, only once was sighted for poor product in 30 years! And never ever had a poisoned product issue because of the safety standards the staff adhered to, and the company always was in profit, lost only two clients. Yet the company has continually stated that the machine was their best ever investment!
They say that computers replacing people is to make our lives (OUR lives, not theirs) more enjoyable, so that we can relax and enjoy life more. Now if humans are continually being replaced with smart machines and computers in all industries, how do humans make money to live?! If there are less and less jobs for humans to apply for, how are we able to live an enjoyable life with no wages, no money, no roof over our heads and no food on our tables. Again it is bullshit, we are being replaced because we are expensive overhead costs.
What?! Are we to all live off welfare from the cradle to the grave and yet somehow afford an inflated economy as more and more companies seek ever higher profit margins! Governments will soon get jack of this but instead of pulling the plug on A.I. slavery they will instead take their frustration out on the people they are suppose to help.
We are told that it is for better safety, so humans need not risk their lives in hazardous situations. Ok so opening a door to a supermarket is a dangerous and hazardous to humans, operating a building lift is dangerous and hazardous to humans, driving a farm tractor is dangerous and hazardous to humans. Yet mining underground with toxic gasses that can blow at any time is not hazardous for humans, drilling for crude oil is not hazardous for humans, working with hazardous nuclear materials is not hazardous for humans. More bullshit! Extremely hazardous jobs are predominately being done by humans with little or no mechanical assistance, yet jobs that are most desirous for humans are being done by machines and computers! We have it totally backwards if we are all about safety. But the truth is the corporations and governments are about kulling back human numbers legally all the while making us human tax cattle more manageable.
Hell, we are so bent on sending man to Mars, that in the end we won’t send men to colonise but robots because it will be cheaper and more efficient. So in the end why bother making rockets to send humans, just keep sending robots to colonise and explore and leave the human trash here on earth to wallow in our own filth!
In the end, Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek Dystonia can not exist while humans are forced to be couch cattle and A.I. is turned into the next Black Slavery Market! And it is all because of financial greed.
Steem me up A.I. Scotty!
(Steps off Soap Box)