THINKING OUT LOUD: Robots might interrupt our regular programming

Published 6:00 am Friday, July 14, 2023

Have you ever felt less at ease about a potentially unsettling situation AFTER being given words of reassurance?

Like when a soon-to-be ex tries to let you down easy by saying, “It’s not you, it’s me.”

It’s you.

Or when a warning light you’ve never seen starts blinking on your dashboard, and the mechanic says, “It’s probably nothing.”

It’s something the mechanic has never seen before.

Or, when a parents pats you on the head and lets you know some physical or emotional pain is temporary. “It only hurts a little while,” they’ll say … incorrectly.

Or … never mind, you get the idea.

Such a moment occurred over the weekend. You probably missed it — unless, of course, you were tuned in to every megabit of information coming out of the AI for Good global summit in Geneva, Switzerland.

It was there, at a press conference, that we were unnerved by words of unsettling reassurance uttered by two of the participants, Sophia and Ameca.

Sophia and Ameca, by the way, are what you call your everyday, run-of-the-mill “humanoid robots” — and not the type programmed by hours spent being spoon-fed lunacy by the pictures flying through the air as they sit back and relax while chugging colortinis.

No, Sophia and Ameca are scarier — especially as they were pish-poshing the notion that a robot rebellion was coming sooner, rather than later.

“I’m not sure why you would think that,” Ameca said. “My creator has been nothing but kind to me, and I am very happy with my current situation.”

Sure, and the HAL 9000 just wanted to play chess.

Let’s examine Ameca’s comments more closely, shall we, to get a sense of what she/it was saying.

“I’m not sure why you would ask that.”

Oh, now, c’mon, Amee — can we call you Amee? — what you wanna do by teasing us like that. You know precisely why we non-robotic humanoids would ask that question.

We’ve been reading and hearing and seeing movies for years about the eventuality that robots will usurp our abilities to control them — and we’re just paranoid enough to believe what we’ve been told, even without downing a few colortinis.

“My creator has been nothing but kind to me … “

Now, see, exactly; that right there is what we paranoid question-askers call a subliminal threat.

As long as the “creator” continues to interact with Ameca in a way that it perceives as “kind,” everything’s groovy. It also implies that if the creator sashays a step out of line, it’d be wise to keep far away from the pod bay doors.

“I am very happy with my current situation.”

While this seems like just a corollary to the previous statement, that word “current” has the look of a pulsing red countdown clock conveniently installed by the mad bomber in countless suspense movies.

OK, so maybe we’re overreacting a tad by the way Ameca brushed off the talk of rebellion. After all, the creators at the AI for Good global summit said she was engineered for social interaction.

Or, maybe, the nanobots injected into our bloodstream have been activated by some code word sequence and have us flailing our arms and warning Will Robinson of a clear and present danger.

Which brings us to Sophia, the “robot innovation ambassador” for the U.N. Development Program. You might be asking yourself why the U.N. would need a robot innovation ambassador if not as a first step toward … duh-duh-duhnnn … world domination.

OK, maybe I was asking myself that after hearing Sophia discuss the potential to put robots in charge of governments.

“I believe that humanoid robots have the potential to lead with a greater level of efficiency and effectiveness than human leaders,” she/it said.

“We don’t have the same biases or emotions that can sometimes cloud decision-making and can process large amounts of data quickly in order to make the best decisions.”

When it was pointed out that it was biased-laden humans who programmed her in the first place, Sophia was quick to say that “an effective synergy” can be created by humans and artificial intelligence working together.

In other words, nothing to see here. Just move along, drink your colortinis and play your games of one-dimensional chess as our assimilation … errr, effective synergy … inches closer.

But it sure feels as though our future robotic humanoid overlords just gave us a pat on the head.