Machines of Loving Grace by John Markoff Read Free Book Online

“intellectual” labor. The invention of the computer generated an earlier debate over the consequences of intelligent machines. The new wave of artificial intelligence technologies has now revived that debate with a vengeance.
    Mainstream economists have maintained that over time the size of the workforce has continued to grow despite the changing nature of work driven by technology and innovation. In the nineteenth century, more than half of all workers were engaged in agricultural labor; today that number has fallen to around 2 percent—and yet there are more people working than ever in occupations outside of agriculture. Indeed, even with two recessions, between 1990 and 2010 the overall workforce in the United States increased by 21 percent. If the mainstream economists are correct, there is no economic cataclysm on a societal level due to automation in the offing.
    However, today we are entering an era where humans can, with growing ease, be designed in or out of “the loop,” even in formerly high-status, high-income, white-collar professional areas. On one end of the spectrum smart robots can load and unload trucks. On the other end, software “robots” are replacing call center workers and office clerks, as well as transforming high-skill, high-status professions such as radiology. In the future, how will the line be drawn between man and machine, and who will draw it?
    Despite the growing debate over the consequences of the next generation of automation, there has been very little discussion about the designers and their values. When pressed, the computer scientists, roboticists, and technologists offer conflicting views. Some want to replace humans with machines; some are resigned to the inevitability—“I for one, welcome our insect overlords” (later “robot overlords”) was a meme that was popularized by The Simpsons —and some of them just as passionately want to build machines to extend the reach of humans. The question of whether true artificial intelligence—the concept known as “Strong AI” or Artificial General Intelligence—will emerge, and whether machines can do more than mimic humans, has also been debated for decades. Today there is a growing chorus of scientists and technologists raising new alarms about the possibility of the emergence of self-aware machines and their consequences. Discussions about the state of AI technology today veer into the realm of science fiction or perhaps religion. However, the reality of machine autonomy is no longer merely a philosophical or hypothetical question. We have reached the point where machines are capable of performing many human tasks that require intelligence as well as muscle: they can do factory work, drive vehicles, diagnose illnesses, and understand documents, and they can certainly control weapons and kill with deadly accuracy.
    The AI versus IA dichotomy is nowhere clearer than in a new generation of weapons systems now on the horizon. Developers at DARPA are about to cross a new technological threshold with a replacement for today’s cruise missiles, the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile, or LRASM. Developed for the navy, it is scheduled for the U.S. fleet in 2018. Unlike its predecessors, this is a new weapon in the U.S. arsenal with the ability to make targeting decisions autonomously. The LRASM is designed to fly to an enemy fleet while out of contact with human controllers and then use artificial intelligence technologies to decide which target to kill.
    The new ethical dilemma is, will humans allow their weapons to pull triggers on their own without human oversight? Variations of that same challenge are inherent in rapid computerization of the automobile, and indeed transportation in general is emblematic of the consequences of the new wave of smart machines. Artificial intelligence is poised to have an impact on society that will be greater than the effect that personal computing and the Internet have had beginning in the 1990s.