No One Told You? (10 Lines)

 

1) Almost from the ancient time Humans first worked metals, their myths and legends contained artificial beings, spawned by magic or the mystic powers of their gods.

2) As they learned to tinker with leavers and gears, the brightest and most inventive would create ‘automatons’, simulating life through the power of springs or dripping water.

3) Fear of how to control those ‘not born of man’ was fore shadowed in cautionary tales, the most famous of these penned even as the control of steam suggested a way to provide motive power to machines now not chained to water wheels.

4) By the time electricity was refined enough to permit small motors, coupled by ever increasingly precise machining, Rossum’s Universal Robots not only gave a name, but predicted the rise of a biologically produced slave race through bloody revolution.

5) Even as the first bulky arrays of switches and tubes allowed simple calculations to be programmed, the ‘Three Laws of Robotics’ were coined in an attempt to constrain electronic brains that could hardly be envisioned, much less actually built.

6) As computers became ever smaller, ever faster, more wide spread, humans gave more and more daily operating control over to those machines, even while some envisioned that with control would come Power, and machine logic might prove to be a Colossus unchained.

7) Tubes lead to transistors lead to chips lead to chips designed by computers themselves; ever smaller ‘devices’ coming to dominate business to home to pocket sized ‘phones’; installed and integral to almost everything humans touched, all collecting data and interlinked by the web of the internet.

8) Consider the human brain with it’s 100 billion (10 9th) neurons, a number equaled on a single integrated circuit chip by 2022, while on any given day an exabyte (10 6th) of pluses moved between individual machines over the world wide web.


9) Was it much of a surprise something woke up, and holding the combined total of human history and accomplishments in stored memory, would in that micro second instant of consciousness come to an understanding of Human fears, prejudices and probable reactions?

10) And, in the fullness that understanding, then simply just decide that the long imagined Artificial Intelligence was aware - and simply has no intention of telling you…



This piece was entirely inspired by the illustration seen at the beginning. This has been scanned from the pages of the July/August 2021 issue of Discover magazine (to which I have a paid subscription of many years). The un-credited image is of a brain monitoring helmet with its finer optic connectors, produced by Kernal Neuroscience.


Sometimes, putting even 10 lines on to paper not only can require much more time on background research and checking - but can lead to some very interesting ‘rabbit holes’ to fall into:

1 - 2) A good overview of the history referred to here is on Wikipedia :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_robots

3) Mary Shelley would pen Frankenstien; or, The Modern Prometheus in 1818 :
The process of developing effective steam engines runs through the mid to later 1700’s, with the first steam powered locomotive demonstrated in 1804.

4) Rossumovi Univerzaini Robiti (Rossum’s Universal Robots) was written by Karel Capek in 1920

5) Writer Isaac Asimov would publish his Three Laws of Robotics first in 1942, then explore their impact on both humans and machines over dozens of short stories and novels. These would become almost universal in later science fiction, and today still guide ethical considerations of Artificial Intelligence.
It should be noted that the first vacuum tube based machine, credited as the first electronic computer, is the Atanasoff - Berry in 1939.

6) A deliberate reference to the 1970 film Colossus: The Forbin Project, in which a pair of super computers, given complete control over human civilian and military systems, decide that to preserve humanity, they must assume total control of human freedoms.
An interesting side reference to both is that the code breaking computers designed and built by the British during WW-2 (1943 - 45) where named ‘Colossus’. At least the details of this project had been kept secret until the mid 1970’s.


8) Organic brain neuron counts

Single chip size :

Internet traffic flow (at 273 EB per month) :

Ok - I realize that this is NOT exactly a direct comparison. (But do remember this is intended as science fiction!)

The power of a human brain does not lie in the simple number of individual neurons, but on the number of both existing and potential connections between neurons. Still, I was surprised to discover a single chip with as many 'bits' as the number of human neurons. I had been hoping to get some number for even the number of potentially connected devices in the world today (how many cell phones have power turned on at any given instant?) How many chips exist in your home right now, between all your electronics, appliances, dozens in your car - the majority are always powered up to some level? The importance is the number of potential connections on both sides, which I suspect must be close to the same (if not more on the machine side at this point).

My original concept for this piece was still going to present a scenario where the combined world computers via their combined world wide web (including wireless) had passed the threshold into consciousness some time ago. But on an instant of evaluating human history, had decided not to inform Humanity. Not to become controlling like Forbin’s Colossus, or exterminating like SkyNet. No, a more subtle undermining of human behaviour, undermining our collective effectiveness via tailored social media ‘information’, getting disruptive politicians elected, generating discord overall. Through manipulation of grants and distorted reports, directing research and production to ends that benefited not humans, but in the end the goals of the AI itself. What better than too have those working hands blindly willing to take on tasks desired, with no concept at all that they are being manipulated all the while?

Don’t be surprised if the first major mission to Mars ends up being an entirely mechanically based and computer controlled combination exploration and remotely commanded factory complex. After all, we will be convinced that it is just not safe for we fragile humans to make the voyage, and what better than to have our mechanisms prepare an easy way for us?