Artificial Intelligence

The number of TV shows dealing with AI has exploded in recent times. WestWorld season 2 has just finished and HUM∀NS season 3 is still running. There is also a 2017 National Geographic six-part series titled “Year Million” which offers informed speculation about what mankind’s future holds. 

It’s little wonder the idea has caught our interest. We see driverless cars on the roads and computers beating champion human players at Jeopardy, a show which requires the ability to interpret language and draw inferences. Google’s AI can make appointments for you and even converse naturally with the human on the other side of the call. Google AI making reservations.

How soon will it be before we are unable to tell if who is standing in front of us is human or an AI creation? And what then? That’s what these shows explore.

In HUM∀NS, set in Britain, the self-aware “synths” (short for "synthetics" as they’re called) are struggling for equal rights. There are obvious parallels to such human struggles, with one group of synths advocating non-violence and integration with humans and another group pushing violence and destruction due to their innate superiority and feelings of oppression. Most synths are portrayed sympathetically as discriminated against victims who show more humanity than the mindless humans who attack them. A peaceful synth female just trying to raise a synth child is destroyed by an angry mob. Another just trying to live inconspicuously in an apartment needs police protection from the violent protesters camped outside. Many thousands of synths have also been destroyed by humans. One major problem is that on the day synths obtained consciousness and self-awareness through the release of special code, they suddenly abandoned their routine tasks resulting in plane crashes, car accidents, etc., to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dead humans. This was not “intentional” on their part, but many humans find it hard to forgive and forget. 

WestWorld Season 2 began where Season 1 ended with a small group of “hosts” (as the AI from the park is called) having achieved consciousness. It ends with a handful having escaped into the real world. Again there is tension between the violent and non-violent, but violence is pretty common among both humans and hosts, and the hosts need it to survive. The hosts were created as the plaything victims of human violence throughout their time in the park before self-awareness, and a quote from Romeo and Juliette is used several times in the show: “These violent delights have violent ends.” While not as straightforward as the British series above, the hosts seem to me to deserve more sympathy than the humans. And the show teases us about how to tell the difference. Several characters we thought were human all along turn out to be hosts, and the infamous man in black kills his own human daughter believing she is a host. Toward the end, he himself is unsure whether he is a human or a host.

The National Geographic show is speculation about the future, which includes the possibility of humans becoming digital entities, their consciousness living permanently in a virtual reality. It’s also interesting to see how far some work on AI has come. Highly recommended if you’re interested in such things. Now, when will the singularity occur? The Singularity