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The Coming Robot Dystopia

Sure, Artificial Intelligence May End Our World, But That Is Not the Main Problem

As Ray Kurzweil speaks to the Observer New Review about the impending advances in artificial intelligence, it seems a good time to heed the warning of such screen classics as Alien, The Terminator and Blade Runner and look back at the rogue computers, robots and replicants that have brought death, disquiet and destruction to humankind. Enjoy, before it's too late

Ray Kurzweil popularised the Teminator-like moment he called the 'singularity', when artificial intelligence overtakes human thinking. But now the man who hopes to be immortal is involved in the very same quest – on behalf of the tech behemoth. Although possibly this is what Kurzweil's critics, such as the biologist PZ Myers, mean when they say that the problem with Kurzweil's theories is that "it's a very bizarre mixture of ideas that are solid and good with ideas that are crazy. It's as if you took a lot of very good food and some dog excrement and blended it all up so that you can't possibly figure out what's good or bad." Or Jaron Lanier, who calls him "a genius" but "a product of a narcissistic age".

If all a futurist has to do is wave his hands and say things will change more rapidly than we expect, then futurists like Kurzweil are nothing but techno-gimmicky Criswells. Utterly useless.

All the pieces are now in place for a Google-created Skynet and the robotic Judgment Day apocalypse that would surely follow. Yes, Google might become the first big corporation to enact Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics.

Kurzweil's goal is to build a search engine that's so smart it'll act like a "cybernetic friend". We're sure that's what Skynet's creators thought before the Terminator appeared on the scene. And with Google's purchase of (primarily military) robotics specialist Boston Dynamics last month we're genuinely starting to get a little worried.

Like it or not, science fiction is becoming science fact. The Terminator was, of course, a work of fiction, but the idea of cyborgs and killer machines is not all that farfetched.  In fact, the danger is becoming so real that the Obama Administration found the need to spell out explicit rules that specify under what circumstances machines are allowed to kill humans.

“Imagine your brain being augmented by Google,” the search engine’s co-founder and chief executive officer, Larry Page, said in a 2004 interview. “For example, you think about something and your cell phone could whisper the answer into your ear.”