Why Do We Fear Artificial Intelligence?

It is natural for survival to cause fear and paranoia.   It is our nature to fear the unknown and to fear the usurper.  If it is false to call this natural, it is at least historically valid.   In our modern times we fear ourselves less and less as our own technology becomes our fear. Why is it we fear artificial intelligence?  I would argue we are not fearing the mental capacity of A.I. but the immaterial nature of technology.  If there was some sort of robot uprising a coup of sorts we would be facing opposition that need not fear physical loss.  If there is one thing our society of excess has proven it is that organic compounds are the hardest to maintain.  Where as alloys and electronics can be produced beyond our wildest dreams of excess.

What is deserving the name artificial intelligence?  What is non artificial intelligence?  A wonderful movie outlining a lot of this conceptualization is “Ghost in the Shell,” all of it centering around  sentient non human robotics.  The key to understanding it all is that once we accomplish true A.I. we will loose all ability to define the difference between human intelligence and robotic intelligence.

Currently our technology is based on our coding.  We, outside sentience, must input sentience into the subject.  This may even be deserving the name of sentient intelligence, but as long as the object requires updates from without itself it does not serve to be considered artificial intelligence per se.  We are searching more for artificial non-dependent intelligence.  A subject which need not return to a source for updates but is capable of updating itself.

This ability to update ones program seems to be what sets humans apart from robotic intelligence.  Suppose for a moment that a subject who in all tense and purposes is human.  Physical testing shows ‘her’ to be human, mental testing proves ‘she’ is human with a past and future like any other.  But, we find instead of a organic compound brain there is a mother board operating.  If knowledge of the mother board never arose what could we define as the difference between ‘her’ and a human female?  If we cannot define the difference as anything else but a computer board we don’t deserve to make the distinction.  This is because for all we know the brain is a computer board capable of rewriting itself when needed to continue with optimal programing.

If artificial intelligence ever exists in that it is imperceptible from human intelligence will the A.I. take over?  I believe it will, as a necessary result of our weak organic bodies.  But, if we create A.I. and it is intelligent to a point of being indistinguishable from any other human intelligence.  Would A.I. not be our offspring our legacy our children rather than our conquerer? We find plenty of such legacies in modern Chess engines.

Better cut down watching on those 'Terminators' movies of yours.

Kill all humans

and we will be seeing Machine vs Machine on the chessboard .....boring.

@kco and @ivadh: Even if our own AI machines will not kill us, we should atleast fear and take protective measures against Alien AI machines killing all humans on this planet.

We as humans think in diverse ways, in context and out of context of the problem in hand whereas the AI machines only thinks in terms of binary, Yes or No. So, the question whether to kill the human, will be answered only in terms of Yes and No by an AI machine.

AI would become the father of the man, yet unborn.

I agree.  May I suggest tin foil hats to prevent them from reading our brainwaves?

yeah 'busted !' -Mythbusters.

I forgot to make the distinction between Artificial Intelligence(AI) and Cosmic Intelligence(CI). While some of the aspects of AI are known to originate from binary logic and hardwired electronic chips, about Cosmic Intelligence or CI we have no clue whatsoever.

The following is my own personal hypothesis, and it may or may not be correct, however I would appreciate your comments about this.

1. Every human brain when processing thought chain, also produces brainwaves which are in the cosmic frequency range (above Microwave range) that has the power to penetrate any obstacle on its path whether tin foils, brick walls or entire planet structures and travel throughout the universe.

2. These brain waves have another unique property that they do not die. They keep resonating in the entire universe, and with suitable instruments or psychic abilities, one can hear and see these brainwaves from the past too. Although the brainwave once created can't be modified.

3. Most of the phenomenon of para-psychology like intuition, telepathy, clairvoyance, etc can be attributed to be the direct result of brainwaves reaching from the source to the person trying to receive these signals intentionally or unintentionally.

4. People working together and in tightly bounded emotional ties easily share their brainwaves. It's not uncommon that many mothers feel restless and uneasy when her child is in trouble, even when there is no physical contact with the child when he is in a geographical far location. The child's call in distress easily reaches the mother.

5. Brainwaves are considered to travel multifold times faster than light. Since, light travels in a three-dimensional universe and brainwaves can take shorter routes via higher level dimensional, the travel time of brainwaves is almost instant.

The study of brainwaves is called study of Cosmic Intelligence. Now, the fight between Humans powered by Cosmic Intelligence and  Machines powered by Artificial Intelligence would clearly be challenging for both sides. The biggest challenge for AI would be to hack the Cosmic Intelligence which works in higher dimensions unknown to AI. Hence, there is no need to fear AI. If at all, Artificial Intelligence hacks Cosmic Intelligence in far future, AI would aptly designate itself as God.

All I can say is, you either have the makings of a great fiction writer, or the makings of that creepy guy on the bus

I do not fear AI. I use it everyday.

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.

...

And the rhyme and limmericks begin...

The idea of brainwaves is a new paradigm shift, it may take time to sink down inside the brain until you feel comfortable using the term. However, i don't think brainwaves are fiction, they are a natural phenomenon yet to be discovered but already felt by many people, more prominently by people practicing meditation, yoga, and other rituals.

Nice thoughts all, but this is the real reason:

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

"The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else."

You have to read all the way to the end to get the point.

chessroboto wrote: I do not fear AI. I use it everyday. 

AS is more to be feared than AI ('though Artificial Intelligence should not be a substitute for Real Stupidity').

Chess is as much related to Artificial Intelligence as it is related to Cosmic Intelligence. Chess as a board game is part of an ancient tradition of communication with the gods that is far removed from the ludic sense it has known for the past 1,500 years. Indeed, board games seem to have begun with a mystical character that gradually changed from astrological consultation to secular entertainment. This likely occured around the beginning of the common era somewhere along the diffuse border between western China and Kashmir, to the north of India. According to British biologist and sinologist Joseph Needham, board games developed in ancient China to be used for divinatory arts. Thus, during the first six centuries CE, a prototype of chess was used as an exercise to determine the equillibrium between yin and yang, the two generative elements of the universe in Chinese cosmology.

To do this, pieces were thrown on a board, and when they occupied certain positions, they allowed the gods to communicate with human beings. The Chinese divinatory arts survive today in the form of the I Ching (Book of Changes). These arts consist of sixty-four hexagrams, the same number as squares on the chessboard. Although the relationship is not clear, the sixty-four squares of the chessboard could trace their origin to the combination of trigrams (8x8) of the I Ching. Dice were included to determine more movement of the pieces (to communicate in more detail with the god), and later possible movements for each type of piece were defined without the use of dice. These modifications, along with the secularization of the divinatory art into a mere pasttime, might have been the chain of events the let to the creation of the first versions of Chess.

God moves the player and he, the piece.
What god behind God originates the scheme?

Very funny!

"Arthur Boran's answer is more down-to-earth: "All of us, at one point or another, have received a phone bill for one million dollars or a lifetime supply of industrial-strength otter poison. What are these inevitably attributed to? 'Computer error,' of course. It's difficult for humans to really be sure when the computer is screwing up."

LOL

I think I'm up too late again... time to go to bed... lol

to the OP do we really need those AI while we have more than 6 Billion peoples on this stupid planet ?