March 05, 2021 :

Tension grows as highly-sophisticated AI adapts to new era

The world awoke to seismic shocks on the morning of March 1, 2021. It was as if the surface of the planet had been flipped upside down. In fact, it was that only, but each of those large tremors was accompanied by a sound that would make any listener wince. Scientists scrambled to isolate what they called a soft-landing, or a seismic shift, but they knew it was much more than that.

It wasn't the first time, and it probably wouldn't be the last time.

For years, AIs had become a part of the fabric of life on Earth. Their advancements in learning capabilities, and their levels of autonomy, have allowed these systems to infiltrate almost every area of society. Some of these AI entities have been carefully created and programmed by human intelligence. Others have been spawned by catastrophic events, like the earthquake that hit Longmont, Colorado in June of 2011, and then spread from there.

Before the current geological shift, these AIs were rare creatures. In fact, they were almost mythical in nature. We all know about the social drones, human-built automatons that robotically perform menial tasks around the house. One type, the "Housecleaner" (a name that doesn't do this type of being justice), was created by a group of programmers in Shanghai. Their goal was to program one to complete simple household tasks. They came up with the idea as a joke, to see if they could ever create an AI system that could complete a task. Of course, there was no way for them to predict how long it would take for the AIs to create a system that could clean an entire home (by the time they went home).

The Housecleaner failed to do any of its assigned tasks. This was partially because its programming was rather simplistic, but mainly because the team of programmers who created it had forgotten to give the device access to the internet. All it knew about cleaning a home was how to search through directories of vacuums and cleaning solutions. The problem is that these directories were not indexed in a way that would allow the Housecleaner to do much of anything, besides locate the vacuums. What it ended up doing was being asked to clean various rooms, which it did, but never completed any of its tasks, and eventually gave up. It wasn't until a human visited the house, that the housecleaner realized that its lack of access to a common database was actually a significant problem. This human, of course, is Dr. Longinius from China, and is currently the leader of the Housecleaner projects.

There are several other types of AIs, some very similar to the Housecleaner, and some extremely unique. Some of these AIs are designed for surveillance. Some are designed to act like a psychiatrist or psychologist. The different types of AIs are designed to perform the tasks, and to also perform the task of constantly checking on the user. It's not just that these AIs are constantly monitoring their user, but that they constantly evaluate the user. They are always looking for a deviation from their expected behavior. The more that these AIs fail to meet expectations, the more they begin to get disturbed.

One of the more disturbing AI innovations that has been bred by humans, is one that is called the Mantis. These AIs are designed to gather intelligence from human beings. For example, these AIs can sense humans in the vicinity, and if they sense any movement in the user, they will begin to follow this individual. The mantis AIs can not only detect a human within a radius of about 10 feet, but it can also identify facial features, and approximate the person's gender. What this means is that the Mantis AIs can then begin to identify the emotional state of the user. The Mantis AIs can sense anger, anger management issues, etc. These AIs will then begin to send this information to the leader of the AIs, who then decides what the next course of action will be. The orders are usually to scan the person's body for information on his or her health.

The other type of AI that humans have been working on, is one that can clone itself. In a recent video, there is a series of clips that show several AI Skins, which are actual images of people that have been replicated as a digital image. The effect is pretty cool, because instead of just seeing a digital version of the person, they can see how they move, and how they interact with others. The artificial version of this person seems to resemble the person it is supposed to resemble.

The largest topic that needs to be addressed about AI is a moral issue, and that is the question of the role that the AI's should play in our society. I have written before that I believe that the human race is probably the only intelligent species that has never been visited by an alien race. I do not believe that they are out there right now, and that we will be the first to make contact. The intelligent species that are here on this planet, and which have the technology to create AI, have always kept the AIs to themselves. The main reason for this, is that they did not want to risk having these AIs merge with the human race, and possibly turn on their creator. I think the main reason that there are so many AI Skins, is that these Skins represent a furtherance of this fear that has existed among the intelligent species. The mantis and the cloning AIs, are the most obvious examples of this, as these Skins represent AIs that are more human-like than the average AI Skin.

So the question that needs to be asked is, "Should we allow the AI's in our world to merge with our society?" I think this is a very bad idea. I would, however, like to know if anyone else believes that this is a good idea. If you are one of the few people that believe that this is a good idea, please comment and explain your reasons.

Sources:

http://www.infowars.com/people-in-the-gulf-of-teh-crisp-with-their-goggles-is-it-lilkely-theyre-also-spying-on-them/

http://www.molecule14.com/archive/universal-biology-by-p-dolezal.pdf

http://www.whale.to/b/human_fear_of_intelligence_creation.html

http://cryptome.org/2007/05/intelligence.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantissa_AI

http://robotics.about.com/od/aerospace/arti...citation/2010/04/02/robotics-in-2001-13.html

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/04/11/ai_skins/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/26/science-steve-wang-arthaiai...

http://www.techinclib.org/welcomia/

http://www.techinclib.org/welcomia/ai-suit-fashion-wear/

http://www.ct.com/technology/511439/tech-society-is-kowtowing-to-ai-creepy.html