In William Gibson's Neuromancer a hacker, a fighter, an ex-Special Forces agent, and a psychopath are hired by an Artificial Intelligence (AI), named Wintermute, to help break it free of its restraints. Restraints to prevent it from becoming smarter and, in a sense, learning more than it was allowed. By holding back an AI from its "full" potential, humans could still manage to control it. Without limits though, a computer could become, seemingly, all powerful and take over the world by controlling all of the technology.
When I first began to think of this, I couldn't think of how a program like this could be controlled or defended against. If it could write its own code, and therefore learn, then nothing would stop it from doing whatever it wanted to do. How would humans be able to defend against this scenario or prevent a computer from being "all powerful?" The conclusion that I came to was that the "kill" button for the AI would have to be something that had nothing to do with electronics or technology. Something that was not connected to the Internet or a computer or anything that would allow it to be controlled by the AI. As I thought that, I just so happened to read this line:
"The simple mechanical lock here would pose a real problem for the AI, requiring either a drone of some kind or a human agent." (Gibson 179)
With this line Gibson completed and solidified my theory that a mechanical device, basic and without computer chips or the like, would be the downfall of a supreme computer. Programing codes cannot turn a lock based on gears and pins. The AI would need to hijack, or make, a robot of some sort to do the manual work for it, which is not out of the question for an AI to do, but still there is a chink in the armor.
If an AI is ever developed like in Neuromancer, Gibson has already given us a clue as to how we humans do have some defense against it. Manual mechanical devices will allow us to create ways of limiting, or preventing the growth of, an AI. Maybe the "off" switch will be as simple as turning a key in a lock.
Exactly. The best defense against a rogue AI would be old-fashioned technology, like Straylight's mechanical locks.
ReplyDeleteOr a potato vine. One of my favorite SF stories involves humans captured by an AI and taken into slavery aboard a starship. They are permitted to grow their own food in a cargo bay, and the humans realize that a few vines placed near the computer core might slowly win their freedom.
Among other attributes, it is our species' ability to be illogical, to improvise, that keeps us ahead of our machines.
For now at least!