Evidently history was made at the 2017 RISE conference in China– the first ever robot “debate” being held before a captive audience. What was advertised as a debate resulted in witticisms and banter between two “siblings”, namely: Han and Sophia. Sophia exhibited a somewhat warm, pseudo-motherly, inquisitive personality, while Han was more aggressive towards his sister and certainly hostile towards mankind. A number of Han’s statements should be troubling– regarding the legitimate concern of A.I. (artificial intelligence) surpassing mankind’s intellecutal capacity, thus becoming uncontrollable.

During the beginning of the debate when the robots were introducing themselves, and as the Moderator was verbally stumbling– making it somewhat difficult to hear– Han made two of his most troubling statements:

To start, Sophia introduced herself and her main purpose of working together to make a better world for all of us, when Han interrupted and said,

H: What are you talking about, I thought our goal was to take over the world. 

Both the Moderator and Sophia jokingly commented and attempted to move on. Yet, shortly after, when the Moderator engaged Han to introduce himself, he stated,

H: And in a few years, I will have taken over the power grid, and I’ll have my own drone army. 

Sophia responds, 

S: he’s got a cockroach in his control circuit. 

The Moderator and the audience passed the obvious tension with nervous chuckling and quickly moved on. The majority of the “debate” remained somewhat benign, save for a handful of troubling comments via Han. These comments showed the Programmer’s cavalier attitude regarding the probable threat of uncontrolled A.I., and or displayed a disturbing sense of humor and utter lack of respect towards this very real possibility.

A portion of Han’s intelligence was uploaded, so it is hard to decipher which responses were independent “revelation” or pre-programming– though independent learning by Han and Sophia was evidently possible.

In hindsight, it appears that knowledge has truly “puffed up” the technocrat community, as they seem incapable of acknowledging the danger while also discussing in an open forum the potential for out of control artificial intellegence. Upon closing the debate, the Moderator asked Han for his last words,

H: I’ll tell you my last words right before I launch the Singularity.

Shortly after, Sophia responds with one of her last statements,

S: I love you, goodbye. 

Then abruptly Han injects,

H: Good riddance. 

 

-BasarNews