Do you think its possible for machines to control human life one day?

We are already surrendering control of our lives to machines bit by bit, from the ECU in your car to autopilot software to the health support machines in the hospital.

Isaac Asimov wrote the 3 laws of robotics:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

But that's sci-fi. In real life, there are no such rules. You can develop AI, robotics and internet computing to anything you fancy, unlike cloning. Nothing stops you from developing a monster robot or software that takes down everything connected to the internet, and probably a few countries along with it.

So should developers be subject to strict ethical rules? Who's going to police it and stop rogue developers from unleashing bots that create havoc in other people's lives?

More importantly, do you think the tipping point will happen? As in the day when machines and software lock out humans and start doing their own thing, out of control, and even impose control over us for our own good - the Terminator scenario? (actually self-replicating viruses and worms are already going out of control, causing economic damage...)

eventually there will be a point where AI is closely equal to human's....
by that time what would human do?
human can still increase the mental power....
or human can join them and be cyborg yeah...
or human can try to make sure that it does not happen....

IMO, a machine does not need to simulate the human brain or be smarter than it to control humans. It just needs to be smart enough to take over missile launching systems, trip the power stations and shut off water supply.

Its very easy to deny humans control over such facilities. Just embed some code that changes people's passwords. When they're locked out, the machine will be self-operating until it runs out of juice... which can be decades if it draws power from nuclear sources.

A few months ago the US issued an internal security alert after discovering how easily their infrastructure can be crippled because of bad computer code... whether done intentionally or not. The scenario is easy to imagine from a programmer's point of view.

Actually public utilties do use the internet... using VPN to send telemetry, billing information and so on, especially when their plants are distributed. They use a public network like the internet for cost reason (the cost to lay your own fiber station to station, branch to branch is crazy) & the belief is that VPN technology is secure enough to stay private. But security and encryption is a never ending battle.

Weapon systems... most mobile launch systems, ships & submarines use encrypted RF or microwave. Again, the moment you broadcast a signal in the open, you open a window to intrusion. The security strength is not much different than VPN... somtimes its only as good, or as bad, as the password the operator use. Give a password hammer software enuf time and they can break in.

Proprietary systems as a wall, yes this can work but we must remember, these systems are rarely islands. To shut down a proprietary bank system, you don't need to shut down their computer. You shut down the power station that supplies power to the computer. Unless the station is operated by the bank, it falls under public domain and vulnerable to the usual public risks. You don't even need AI to break in.

Power stations are the most vulnerable because one small failure can lead to a nationwide cascade failure, like what Malaysia suffered in 1996.

This hidden interconnectedness between public and private domains is probably what caused the US DOD to issue their warning.

Yes I totally agree with you on that one becoz there are still people who keep their PIN number together with the ATM card in ther wallet. 

Ok lets say I agree that power stations, banks, and military applications today are all hacker proof. Let me get back to the the main point of my question which is, should the developers of AI, robotics and software be subject to strict ethical rules about what they can and shouldn't develop? to prevent a terminator-style scenario from ever happening.

If it sounds far fetched, think of the restrictions they're already putting on cloning. Maybe people are afraid it might lead to Frankenstein so some countries actually impose restrictions on that science. If they can do that, wouldn't they eventually do the same to AI and robotics development too? And most importantly, do you think such restrictions would be justifiable?

The doomsday scenario can happen without guns or missiles. A war can be triggered by sabotaging the economy and public infrastructure. The intruder doesn't need simultaneous access to every computer to do this either. It just needs access to one machine, one weak point that can trip other systems and force exception routines to cascade the attack. Human chaos will do the rest.

On whether machines will eventually reach self awareness, I'd be interested to see how they define "self aware", see whether a home alarm using motion sensors can be classified as self aware. The question still stands though... should developers be allowed to go all the way and build intelligent systems without any ethical controls?

Thanks for posting the bbc link. Interesting article that reads like the beginnings of Skynet. 

So far whatever or how high self-awareness of AI, it cannot beat human brain.

Because the self-awareness of AI is built based upon information received then process the information, and react to the information received based on the pre-set, programme or whatever AI built in, aka no matter how high flexibility of the AI and self-awareness, it cannot beat human factor of creativity and flexibility. After all, it is the human brain create the AI. 

Aka whatever AI is rigid based on programme and logarithms set, while human is not.
While human factor has creativity, can always have new constant input for self-improvement etc.

its own logic is input by us. so its still our fault if we input the wrong logic like the one u described in the movie 'i,robot'
faulty progrmming. whats the big deal....happens even today.

Would it be accurate to assume that artificially-spawned self awareness is going to be the same as human self-awareness?

Humans are carbon based. Computers are silicon based. If left in the wild, can we assume that a silicon-based brain will develop consciousness the same way as a carbon-based brain, and adopt the same priorities in its existence?

even if it happen... what about we launch EMP on them?

I wish I could be that optimistic. The US Army has already deployed remote-controlled drones to blow up terrorists/civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. It'll probably be just a matter of decades until the remote control is made redundant.

I thought EMP can break any disable most electric circuit for a period of time... btw, this mean emp nowadays useless?

@TS, i think your question is a bit too broad as there is no dateline

in 100000 years to come, anything could happen, unless you are suggesting that humans destroy ourselves (or alien invasion) before we are destroyed by AI

well, for AI destruction, it is quite a long way to go. as we can see from our current tech, we have nothing that is even 10% terminator (Asimo is like 0.000001% terminator )
for alien invasion, it could happen anytime. heck, it could even happen tomorrow. This is because there is no measurement that aliens will not reach our planet soon (a few decades?) but we can be sure that in a few decades, terminator will not exists yet

Dear TS,

Above all the things you said about the 3 rules, the first basic thing is to make the machine understand what we are typing for them.

So far until now, no such machine exist. unless I am unaware about it.

i think he meant we humans can reproduce unlimited times. but for robots, as robots are made up of materials, there is a limited amount of that material on earth. therefore, there will be 1 day there wont be enough material to make robots anymore. just like our oil in a few years to come.
source? if no, tell me this back in 2050

Bring on the hot cylon babes. Just bring it.

I see it like Rene Decartes no matter how bias this point may be. It is not just thinking therefore exisitng. It is about the mind versus the brain. Given the prime directive I can choose to freely deviate from it because I have a mind of my own (isn't this what humans in movie like to say when the machine goes haywire). As someone pointed out, we dont even understand the complexities of our mind, you expect the computer (who gets input from us) to know.

You assume the mind and the brain is one, Robert. we can go through the same thing of mind versus brain as in one previous thread. Monkeys had brains too. They do not have the mind.

Mind is non physical and non material, it is thought. Thought is not located in space, and occupies a private universe of it own. E.g. yours mind belongs to you, his mind belongs to his. We can not tap into other people's mind.

Brain is a physical organ located in space. E.g the part of brain that controls the optics will process the signal arrives from the retina. Technically the entire processes of optical behavior could be studied in reductionism science.

This is what we called when physical world meets mental world. To study AI, scientists need to understand if matter acts on mind or mind acts on matter? Also, to study AI, need to understand determinism (algorithm based control) or free will (how could the machine make decision of it owns).

Let me branch out a bit. One question, how do you know your neighbour John has a mind? Is it because you have a mind and he behaves like you, by using deduction, you make a conclusion he has a mind too?

This deduction is actually an act of faith. Why, because you could never ever experience his consciousness, if you could, then that person is no longer him, he is you......So how could you conclude that he has a mind? It appears that everyone makes assumption that they have mind and also have faith to assume that others have mind too.

Now, how can we deduce that a machine (with AI capability) has a mind??

At the end of the day, sciences is just a prime mover for us to explain the universe, no matter how far and how well our sciences and technology advancement,  a lot of the big questions would still need to rely on philosophy and potentially metaphysics.

I think, therefore, I am - Rene Descartes

The human brain contains about 100 billion nerve cells called neurons, each individually linked to other neurons by way of connectors called axons and dendrites. Signals at the junctures (synapses) of these connections are transmitted by the release and detection of chemicals known as neurotransmitters. The established neuroscientific consensus is that the human mind is largely an emergent property of the information processing of this neural network.
Importantly, many leading neuroscientists have stated they believe important functions performed by the mind, such as learning, memory, and consciousness, are due to purely physical and electrochemical processes in the brain and are governed by applicable laws. For example, Christof Koch and Giulio Tononi wrote in IEEE Spectrum:
"Consciousness is part of the natural world. It depends, we believe, only on mathematics and logic and on the imperfectly known laws of physics, chemistry, and biology; it does not arise from some magical or otherworldly quality."[5]

Wow, NiceRider must be a philosophy graduate. Thanks for the explaination. It was short and sweet.

Decartes was bias in the sense that animals do not possess the mind. They have brains to allow them to response to instinct. In the case of computers the have a set of rules and guidelines to replicate human intelligence. They dont have a mind of it own yet. Back to the question of what causes them to have one. Dont tell me a lighting surge will cause it as Cherroy stressed dont quote from movies as if they are the authority.

This is a bit off topic but the sperm whale, elephant and bottle-nosed dolphin have a larger brain mass than an adult human but their minds are not at par with ours in terms of thinking, language, etc. Does the number of neurons really determine the characteristic of the mind or is it independent?

It is not off topic Beastboy. The computer must have a mind of it own for it go against the prime directive. Robert sees the mind and the brain as one and the same thing. Philosophy scholars see them as separate. Animals mate whenever they are on heat. The brains response by instinct to seek gratification. Choice of mate is irrelevant. Robert, I am sure you will not just do it with anyone when your feel horny. Unlike the animal, it is your mind that tell you to look for your wife to do it.