A.I, all or nothing.

Stopping Killer Robots at the Source (Code)

By Glenn McDonald, Seeker | November 23, 2016.

Credit: Paramount Pictures

Not too long ago, a powerful collection of scientists, industry leaders and NGOs launched the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, an activist group dedicated to preventing the development of lethal autonomous weapons systems. Among those that signed up for the cause: Stephen Hawking, Noam Chomsky, Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak.

Those high-profile names earned the cause a lot of attention and lent legitimacy to the notion that killer robots, once considered a science fiction fantasy, are actually a fast-approaching reality.

But are they, really? An intriguing study published in the International Journal of Cultural Studies takes a different approach to the idea of "killer robots" as a cultural concept. The researchers argue, in part, that even the most advanced robots are just machines, like anything else our species has ever made. If we're careful with the components we put in — both technologically and culturally — they won't just somehow turn on us in a future robot revolution.

"The point is that the 'killer robot' as an idea did not emerge out of thin air," said co-author Tero Karppi, assistant professor of media theory at the University of Buffalo. "It was preceded by techniques and technologies that make the thinking and development of these systems possible."

In other words, we're worried about killer robots because that's the story we keep telling ourselves and the terminology we keep using. The authors cite films like "The Terminator" or "I, Robot," in which it's just assumed that far-future robots will eventually turn on the human race. Those same assumptions are informing how we're preparing for a future of machine intelligence.

For instance, the paper cites a passage from the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots website:

Over the past decade, the expanded use of unmanned armed vehicles has dramatically changed warfare, bringing new humanitarian and legal challenges. Now rapid advances in technology are resulting in efforts to develop fully autonomous weapons. These robotic weapons would be able to choose and fire on targets on their own, without any human intervention.

The researchers respond that these alarmist dystopian scenarios reflect a "techno-deterministic" worldview where technological systems, when given too much autonomy, become destructive not only for society but also for the human race.

"It implies a distinction between human and machine," the authors write. "It seems to offer a clear 'evolutionary' break or categorical distinction between humans-in-control of machines versus autonomous weapons as machines-in-control-of-themselves."

But what if we coded machine intelligence in such a way that robots don't even make a distinction between human and machine? It's an intriguing idea: If there's no "us" and no "them," there can be no "us versus them."

Indeed, Karppi suggested that we may be able to tweak the way future machines think about humans on a fundamental level.

"One possible scenario might be to try to think of robots and machine intelligence as social," he said. "How these systems are working together with humans — not independently and in opposition to humans."

By focusing on these cultural techniques, as the paper terms them, we can analyze and redirect the technologies that will determine the nature of our future robots. The authors cite a recent New York Times report that the Pentagon has allocated $18 billion of its latest budget to develop systems and technologies that could form the basis of fully autonomous weapons.

If we want to make changes to the way we develop these systems, the time is now. Simply banning lethal autonomous weapons down the line doesn't address the root causes of the dilemma. To really avoid the development of autonomous killing machines, we need to dig into the digital and cultural DNA at the root of the problem.

The key to creating a kinder, gentler robot future is to recognize that robots are ultimately a creation of humankind. The robots of the future won't be technological menaces that drop down from the stars (hopefully). They'll be built by humans, with all our attendant complexities.

"Machine intelligence is here and we need to learn to live with it," Karppi said. "What living with these systems means is not only a problem of technology or engineering, but a problem that involves culture, humanity and social relations. »

Will Sci-Fi Bots Write the Next Great Dystopian Novel?

By Tia Ghose, Senior Writer | November 16, 2016.

Intelligent machines may some day use the styles of entire genres to create new and possibly beautiful ones, says one author.

OAKLAND, Calif. — William Faulkner kept the words flowing with a steady drip of whiskey. Laurence Sterne conquered writer's block by shaving his beard. Ernest Hemingway stopped writing just when the story got good, so he'd always know where to pick up the next day.

But perhaps the next generation of writers may get a boost from robots that do the hard work for them. An idea, put forth by an American author, is to use artificial intelligence to fill in parts of a story, an email or other document when a writer is searching for the best way to express him or herself. Programs that use neural networks (machines modeled after the brain) or so-called deep learning may be especially useful, Robin Sloan, the author of "Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), said here at the Real Future Fair yesterday (Nov. 15).

"It turns out you can train a neural network on a big body of text," Sloan said. "It can be Wikipedia; it can be all the works of Charles Dickens; it could be all of the Internet."

Though these A.I. programs may not be able to craft a masterpiece like "A Tale of Two Cities" just yet, they could get a feel for how certain types of writing sound; "they can use grammar and put words together in interesting and convincing ways — and I think unexpected and beautiful ways," Sloan said.

Destroying all the high families

Sloan created a writing bot and had it read all of his old science-fiction magazines from the 1960s and 1970s. The program reads and learns the styles of those old-school stories, then, like a robotic Mad-lib, suggests ways to finish off those sentences and paragraphs.

At the fair, Sloan worked with the audience to generate the beginning of a story:

"A long, long time from now in Oakland there was a robot designed to destroy all the high families. The high families were the ones of course who owned the seasons. When they said so it was summer. When they decreed — winter fell."

Let's be honest. This is no Ray Bradbury — or even Spock fan-fiction. But something very similar to this writing bot could be a useful tool for gaining inspiration, Sloan said.

"I am 100 percent sure, in some number of years, that text editors will have some version of this," Sloan said.

For instance, auto-complete programs could read an entire archive of corporate email, so that a person who is trying to get a point across will have suggestions that are in keeping with the corporate style, Sloan said. Or perhaps the next big movie hit will be written by screenplay writers who are locked in a hotel room, bouncing ideas off each other and a writing bot, Sloan said.

This isn't the first time people have tried to leverage A.I in the service of creativity. In 2008, a computer wrote a Russian novel called "True Love," meant to have the plot line of Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" with the writing style of Haruki Murakami, The St. Petersburg Times Reported. Earlier this year, a computer program composed and then painted a new Rembrandt in the style of the Dutch master. In May, a cadre of robot painters took their best shot at creating art in a wide array of styles. And in May, Microsoft had to kill off an A.I. named Tay that was supposed to learn its conversational style from the Internet, after it rapidly learned to be racist.

Resume: The first article talks about A.I and more precisely about a code that could prevent machines to be over-powered. As exemples, the writer quote movies as « Terminator » or « I Robot ». Many scenario are to ban lethal robots so it cannot turn back over humans and to promote robots which are aware that they are a human creation, so it could always remember not to hurt his creator, who are us.

My second article speaks about next generation robots that will perhaps replace the hard work for writers. Indeed, they may fill empty chapters where the writer’s imagination failed.

those 2 articles show us that we are in this generation where robots and A.I are surrounding us. It may be wonderful and peaceful or chaotic and hopeless.