I’ve seen this movie before. A naked Terminator asks for information and we don’t have the answer, he says “I’ll be back” and slams a car into your desk. Then, his chums slaughter mankind and take over the planet.
Or, how about the movie where Will Smith battles a big brainy robot that is intent on “saving” mankind from itself by turning mankind into slaves?
Nope. No thanks.
In the middle of battling Twitter, Elon Musk apparently built building a robot called “Optimus.” Optimus will be revealed on September 30, 2022, but I already don’t like it. It has a black face shield with the shape of a human.
Why Musk is doing this? Well, profit of course but this flies in the face of his past comments.
In 2014, Musk was visiting with Facebook execs and voiced his concerns. He thought AI intelligence was “more dangerous than nukes”:
“I genuinely believe this is dangerous,” he told the Facebookers eight years ago. I have no doubt that Facebook execs (now Meta) believe that AI is benign because their boss is a cyborg, but we’ve been told not to worry about it. That “AI”, the type that will take over the planet and enslave mankind is like, years away.
Thanks for the reassurance.
Experts in the field tell us not to worry because most AI is designed for simple “robots,” maybe a couple of tasks. Robots are great for putting a widget in a widget hole and not much else. The experts remind us that sure, AI has some present dangers. Small things, like destabilizing nations and turning the lights off everywhere.
Ben Nye, the Director of Learning Sciences at the University of Southern California, Institute for Creative Technologies (USC-ICT) said “If the AI is explicitly designed to kill or destabilize nations…accidental or test releases of a weaponized, viral AI could easily be one of the next significant Manhattan Project scenarios.” He added “We are already seeing smarter virus-based attacks by state-sponsored actors, which is most assuredly how this starts.”
Okay, that’s not scary, right?
But don’t worry folks, the guy who was, just 8 years ago, warning against AI getting too smart and out of hand will show off his AI creation in 7 days.
Calm down, humans. Don’t worry readers, Optimus, with its black-faced death mask, is designed at present, for simple tasks; but Musk envisions that Optimus will be reproduced in the thousands (then millions), to perform home tasks for you like making dinner, mowing lawns, and… sex. No, I am not kidding, that is what was in Reuters’ video report.
I have seen this movie before and I pass. But is it possible to opt out? I don’t want Optimus or any of its creepy progeny aka Terminator mowing my lawn, cooking my meals, or blowing me up. I don’t want some weirdo robot pushing me into a couch and telling me “this is for your own good, Jim. Trust me”.
I already have “Alexa” and that is creepy enough.
In fact, let’s try this: Say “Alexa, turn yourself off.”
I may just tell you “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”