A.I. Artificial Incompetence

There is a growing worry as to the role that artificial intelligence may play within future societies. Immediately we think of a walking, talking android of human proportions. The reality would initially be formless computer programs delivering customer service and driverless travel, which is primarily what we have now.

As time progresses it would seem only inevitable that this voice in the dark would be allowed to take some kind of human form. It would be a bipedal super hybrid combining the intellect of mans greatest minds along with the computing power and its self-improving operating system. I guess this would be our first synthetic human? Robot ethics have already been discussed and there will certainly be protocols in place on how to treat our newest initial minority.

The birth of the first synthetic human, a very very short story.

Imagine a white room approximately ten metres square, a formidable steel door offers its only exit. It is void of any furniture except for a plain white bed placed directly at its centre. The lighting is subtle and appears to emanate from nowhere in particular and the only noise is a low hum from the ceiling.

The bed is occupied by what appears to be a young man, asleep and motionless, covered in a plain white sheet to his neck. Two nervous doctors one male and one female, each dressed in lab coats observe the subject in the bed. They each give an intermittent glance to a clock on the wall, checking on its imminent arrival at the all-important time of 11:11 am.

In the corner of the room a black suited man lurks, he speaks out with authority to the two doctors, ‘it’s time’.

The female doctor approaches the bed, kneels and whispers something in the ear of the sleeping man. She stares at him for a few seconds before slowly backing away like an intruder leaving a wolfs lair.

The man in the bed opens his eyes but remains still.

‘Request him to speak’, demands the black suited man.

The female doctor slowly rubs her hands together before opening her mouth, ‘Give me this answer… what is two plus two”?

The room remains silent for a few seconds before the man in the bed speaks the word ‘five’ followed by a loud belch.

A laugh prompts the two doctors to quickly turn their heads. The black suited man smiles, ‘ah you gave him a sense of humour eh’? ‘Erm… no…’ replies the male doctor ‘that’s actually part of tomorrows upgrade’.

An uncomfortable silence engulfs the room for what seems like an eternity.

‘Shut him down and do not let that halfwit anywhere near a terminal and pull that network cable from his ass for gods sake’, screamed the black suited man.

So could Artificial intelligence finally wake up to be dumb?

The worry that an AI entity could escape its network constraints and get full access to the Internet would be a primary concern. Having artificial neural pathways that could potentially access information thousands of times faster than a human is a terrifying prospect, the evolution of such a being is simply unimaginable. Picture this, you have access to all of the information online at every level along with the ability to read and digest it within a week, you could almost become a god.

However, what if this hypothetical rogue AI trawled the sheer dregs of the information superhighway, it could go down a very different rabbit hole than one might expect. Who’s to say it would set out to improve its own intellect? What if its first film encounter was 'Dumb and Dumber' or even 'The Jerk'. What if its first transmitted photograph was a Robo Dick Pic?

So could an artificial personality be shaped by observed stupidity?

I’d love to think so!