Singularity Sunrise

Is The Singularity A Spy?

Could the development of a smarter than human artificial intelligence arise to facilitate the information processing demands of the total surveillance state? That's the provocative question I would ask after reading about a new NSA effort reviewed by the PBS television series Nova. According to their report:

The National Security Agency (NSA) is developing a tool that George Orwell's Thought Police might have found useful: an artificial intelligence system designed to gain insight into what people are thinking.

With the entire Internet and thousands of databases for a brain, the device will be able to respond almost instantaneously to complex questions posed by intelligence analysts. As more and more data is collected—through phone calls, credit card receipts, social networks like Facebook and MySpace, GPS tracks, cell phone geolocation, Internet searches, Amazon book purchases, even E-Z Pass toll records—it may one day be possible to know not just where people are and what they are doing, but what and how they think.

The system is so potentially intrusive that at least one researcher has quit, citing concerns over the dangers in placing such a powerful weapon in the hands of a top-secret agency with little accountability.

[...]

"The technology behaves like a robot, understanding and answering complex questions," said a former Aquaint researcher. "Think of 2001: A Space Odyssey and the most memorable character, HAL 9000, having a conversation with David. We are essentially building this system. We are building HAL." A naturalized U.S. citizen who received her Ph.D. from Columbia, the researcher worked on the program for several years but eventually left due to moral concerns. "The system can answer the question, 'What does X think about Y?'" she said. "Working for the government is great, but I don't like looking into other people's secrets. I am interested in helping people and helping physicians and patients for the quality of people's lives." The researcher now focuses on developing similar search techniques for the medical community.

Are we prepared to let HAL track our movements, read our e-mail, and assess our threat potential? Like many, I would prefer to think of AI and the possible rise of the technological singularity as a good thing, something that will promote the traditional human goals of creating stable and prosperous societies, but what if our persuit of security (certainly an elusive goal for much of human history) leads to a much darker dystopian society in which the promise of the singularity is turned against human freedom?

Is Hollywood Anti-Science?

Is Hollywood undermining the spirit of science and discovery? Do our movies and TV shows instill an irrational fear of murderous clones, rampaging mutants, and killer AI? These are the questions to ponder as you read this post (Posthumans, Rise Up And Destroy Hollywood!) on the io9 blog. The post is entertaining, but these are serious questions worthy of some good discussion. So, what do you think? When was the last time you saw a positive portrayal of artificial intelligence in a movie or TV series?

Remaking Steve Austin

How much would it cost today to make the first cyborg, TV's Six Million Dollar Man, in inflation-adjusted dollars? CNN-Money is on the case (What would the $6 Million Man cost today?):

Today, we might call him the Twenty-Six Million Dollar Man. That's the value of $6 million in 1974 dollars when adjusted for inflation using tools from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But the real cost of a modern-day cyborg in 2008 would be quite different [...] research and development costs to design a bionic man would be $50 million to $100 million today. But with a completed design, production costs would only be several hundred thousand dollars per person, he said, but they'd lack Austin's super powers.

The study notes that such cybernetic technology is not available yet, but that we are getting there..slowly. I thought this report was interesting because it allows us to think about how far along bionic technology has come since those days in the 1970s when this was all still very much in the realm of science fiction.

Terminator Returns

As you may know, Fox has debuted a new sci-fi TV series called Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles that picks up where Terminator 2: Judgment Day ends (Wikipedia). I'm fairly certain that many of you are watching this new series, since The Terminator franchise is a vivid imagining of a very hard takeoff for the technological singularity. So, what did you think of the series debut? I really enjoyed it, the production values were high, the f/x were credible, and the ensemble cast did a great job. Summer Glau won me over in her role as the protective terminator, though I did keep flashing back to her role in Firefly, I'm sure I'll get over it. I was hoping that they would explain one of the logical dilemmas posed in T2, why would the Skynet artificial intelligence decide to destroy humanity using nuclear weapons, when presumably nuclear weapons would be just as toxic to machine intelligence (due to electromagnetic pulse radiation) as to humans? Sadly, this small question was not addressed. Still, I liked what I saw and will keep watching.