Sync talks with futurist, sci-fi writer Robert J. Sawyer
To help commemorate the Blu-ray Disc and DVD release of the Warner Bros.’ sci-fi flick, Terminator Salvation, Sync gazes into the future with Canada’s award-winning author, Robert J. Sawyer. You might not like what you read, though.
Will machines become smarter than humans and even become “self-aware”? It’s not only possible – it’s probable, and within 20 years — says Robert J. Sawyer, the Mississauga, Ont.-based author of 20 science fiction books.
To help celebrate the launch of Terminator Salvation on Blu-ray Disc and DVD, the brilliant 49 year-old futurist speaks with Sync about “self-aware” computers — and where humans will fit into the equation.
Sync: Thanks for your time, Robert. So, what’s a futurist?
Robert J. Sawyer: [Laughs]. I’m a writer of science fiction novels, dealing heavily in artificial intelligence, but I guess calling me a “futurist” means I can charge 10 times more for a talk! Whatever you call it, the process is the same: a sci-fi writer and futurist both look at past trends and extrapolate into the future. Most people are very bad at doing this. In reality, progress is exponential – not linear – so we will progress in 10 years what just took 20 years. After that, we’ll progress more in 5 years than the past 10.
Sync: This is something like Moore’s Law, yes?
Sawyer: Yes, but Moore’s Law states computing power doubles every 18 months, but it’s not just computers but other areas, too, such as biotechnology. A futurist tries to prepare people for that change.
Sync: From your perspective, what’s A.I., exactly?
Sawyer: Artificial intelligence used to mean machines that can think and are conscious — essentially intelligent beings — then we found out that was a tough thing to accomplish. Many said “oh, we never meant conscious or intelligent, but computers could one day mimic things that appear to be intelligent or conscious.” But now what’s happening is that we’re moving back to the original definition because we’re seeing what’s possible: machines that are self-aware, intelligent, conscious.
Sync: OK, we understand the intelligent part, as computers can use its programmed knowledge to perform certain tasks (and in milliseconds flat), but “self-aware”? Really?
Sawyer: Yes, this will happen within the coming decade or two. We will have machines that are as intelligent as we are, and more so. In the Terminator franchise at some point in the not too distance future, we’ve got a military network of computers called Skynet, essentially an Internet of sorts, linked by satellites, and machines became complex and self-aware without anyone creating it. It wasn’t the design goal, but intelligence just naturally emerged — kind of what happened to us about 40,000 years ago. Our intelligence evolved to create cave paintings, use tools, develop language, and so on. The same thing will naturally happen to machines. Yes, Terminator is a fictional universe, but it’s inevitable this will happen for real.
Sync: If and when this happens, when machines become smarter than us and conscious “beings,” do you believe these computers could attack us (or each other) as they do in the Terminator universe?
Sawyer: One of two things will happen after it wakes up. It will either look around and decide it feels some sort of loyalty to us as its creator and it likes us because, I dunno, it likes our sitcoms [laughs]. Or computers will wake up and think of us as an impediment.
Sync: Just like the Terminator fiction.
Sawyer: Yes, on January 1, 2018, in the Terminator universe, computers get “smart.” Now keep in mind, Moore’s Law, which has been proven to be true, means that by Canada Day, July 1, 2019, a computer’s IQ now doubles from Jan. 1, 2018. Our IQ stays the same. Multiply that by many years and there’s no way we can catch up.
Sync: Assuming machines are armed, why would they want to destroy us, even if they resent us?
Sawyer: A computer or network of computers could determine humans are likely to cause a nuclear holocaust or something else that serves as a threat to its existence, it could logically go down its checklist for its own survival and act on it.
Sync: C’mon now.
Sawyer: Machines will exceed our intelligence. It will happen. But what date this will happen is cause for debate. The outcome? Machines will decide they like us or they’re better off without us. Either outcome is likely. The Terminator movies, which is science fiction, can provide a warning for us.
Sync: And how do we act on it? Stop computer progress? That won’t happen.
Sawyer: I agree, but perhaps it could wake us up about what we’re doing with our planet, the way things are going. Nuclear war is certainly a plausible scenario, and one we have to be vigilant against. Self-aware computers are inevitable, not just likely. I mean, already our computers are designed by other computers. Computers will be self-aware for sure within two decades and many people believe it will happen this next decade, before 2020.
Sync: Isn’t it more plausible that humans will merge with machine, to better our lifespan and abilities?
Sawyer: That’s happening, too. The first part of that is pacemakers, which are neural implants to regulate the beating of the heart. Millions already have that now, we’ve already crossed that border of putting electronic chips in our body. The similar thing is happening with brain dysfunctions or blindness, where chips are starting to be used. We’re using machines in our bodies to overcome a deficiency, but soon we’ll use them to give us additional capabilities. Our memory isn’t as good when we’re older, for example, so there will be a desire for that, such as implanting memory. That line has already been crossed…
Sync: Yes, that sounds handy to have a digital dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopaedia and search engine in our heads. We’re almost there, as we’re all toting around a smartphone that does this, no?
Sawyer: Absolutely. But the window to web on an iPhone or BlackBerry is only a couple of inches, which is pathetic. There’s no doubt we’ll be seeing web content and other information in our vision, just like Arnold sees that list of dialogue in his “eyes” and then selects the most appropriate response, or uses facial recognition to see information about someone. Imagine walking into a room and all of a sudden – oh my God — the VP of my company is here and I can’t remember the names of his kids. Today, you need to type info into your phone with thumbs, which is ridiculous when you could be able to pull up the info in your head, such as “It’s Devon’s birthday tomorrow.” With this tool we’d feel a lot better in terms of the rat race [laughs]. We have this little dripping, leaky faucet at our fingertips, but we want to get that fat pipe in our heads via implant.
Sync: When do you think this could happen?
Sawyer: By end of the decade, maybe 2010, where we’re going from a peripheral device you carry to YOU being on the web.
Sync: OK, well, then, thank you for fascinating us — and scaring us — with your vision of the future. This is some pretty wild stuff.
Sawyer: [Laughs]. Thanks, Marc. My pleasure.
Great interview guys! But I disagree with two premises: 1) the connection made by Sawyer between computational power (Moore’s Law) and intelligence as measured by I.Q. and 2) Nuclear war being a likely scenario.
On the first point, despite the incredible advances in computational speed and capacity, we really aren’t any closer to having “intelligent” machines than we were 10 years ago. We have machines with better programming, able to interpret and act on a wider range of data, but are they more intelligent? I don’t think so. But they sure are handy!
On the second point, I think we are further from nuclear war scenario than at any other time since the development of the bomb. There are fewer weapons now than there were ten years ago, and though some may end up in the hands of rogue states, this is not sufficient for all-out war. I think a terrorist nuclear detonation is much more likely. Don’t forget: A nuke war has no winners. That was the whole point behind ‘mutually-assured destruction’ which kept the US and the Soviet Union from actually pursuing a first-strike initiative. This remain as true today as it did then. Especially in a world where resources are the ultimate prize, what good would it do to destroy the very resources you seek to acquire?
Thanks again though… great material for thought.
[The preceding comment was computer generated. Move along, people, nothing to see here.] ;-)
LOL
RE: I think a terrorist nuclear detonation is much more likely?
That is the point. Since a computer “thinks” logically, if there is a point reached in our “development” that enough – that is a critical mass of terrorist or insane rebelious thinking is ovserved by a future computer anti-virus like in the Matrix, then the next logical step would be to attempt to get rid of the virus (us) that is a threat to the rest of life on this world. A computer (future or not) will not be possible to understand that we do not really want to destroy the world and ourselves. But are we even sure that this is the truth? As the Governments start to make changes that they want – even if it is not what is good or what we want – this rebelious part of society that has no outlet and is not listened to, becomes unstable. Do you think this is not possible? Just recently (in Canada) the governmet is passing a law to “harmonize” our taxes. A good percentage of our population does not want this – but the government turns a deaf ear, and does what THEY want. And we are becoming aware that no mater which government we vote in – they say one thing to get elected, but do what they want when they are in power. This is the kind of thing that will be obvious to the logicl mind of any future computer that “controls the world.”
It shoud be obvious to us now – our logical and collective mind needs to wake up!
..Steve
Wow–you are a true optimist, definitely not paying attention (or not willing to believe the truth) to those countries who are now creating weapons of various kinds. People will use weapons of mass destructions if they believe it will further their own gains, even if it means a world wide holocaust because that is their goal; either they win or no one wins.
I think you’re oversimplifying. The world isn’t black and white – good guys and bad guys. The point is not “will a nuke ever be used again” – I think it will, eventually. But an all-out nuclear war? That seems very, very unlikely.
I think nuclear war is pretty primitive considering the technological advancements moving along exponentially.
We can find much better and easier ways to dismantle life now…aren’t we clever? Ah yes—the ‘intelligent species’….
If we continue on with trying to “Code” and “Program”
machines the way we are today, then they’re going
to continue being DUMB as DOORKNOBS!
If, however, we begin to construct the basic hardware
that EMULATES our own organic neural net, then we’ll
get a machine that can rival and even exceed our own
capabilities.
Using an example, IBM fairly recently sumulated the
cortical region of a rat on a massively parallel
supercomputer called Blue Gene. By emulating the actual
molecular and chemical structure of that cortex in software,
the designers were able to run a 10 second simulation of
its operation and were thus able to perform ANY operation
that would normally be used in that brain structure
-albeit quite slowly-.
Applying such simulation of basic brain structure, we would
be able to DUPLICATE the general pattern matching capabilities
of humans within software, which then allows the simulation
to learn very much like we do. If we give the simulation
MULTIPLE hardware inputs such as many Internet connections,
multiple machine vision systems with pre-built font and
typeface recognition and audio inputs, the emulated human
brain could learn at a much more accelerated rate than humans.
By sending the emulated brain structure to “School” with
multiple teachers “teaching” it 24 hours a day, 365 days a
year in shifts, we could turn that un-organized neural net
from a baby into a graduate level student in probably less
than 4 years. AND it would aquire, from its internal pattern
matching abilities, a semblance of what we call a PERSONALITY.
The quality of that personality would be HIGHLY DEPENDENT
upon the initial conditions of it’s learning environment.
So the warning here is that a fully software-emulated
brain structure would need to be taught ALL the basics
of human ethics, morality, art, science, social etiquette
and politics by RESPONSIBLE, ETHICAL and DISCIPLINED people.
This would have an effect much like how we teach a child.
Children taught by ethical, moral and disciplined people
generally turn into ethical, moral and self-disciplined
adults. This final learning could then be copied to other
hardware to allows us a DEFENCE against the inevitable
ROGUE artificial intelligences that will be eventually
created by rogue nasty, unethical, immoral people.
The key here is who gets up and running a fully grown
AI first! — First one out of the gate usually wins!
The base hardware challenges is that some people believe
that a 100 Petaflop (i.e. 100 Quadrillion Floating Point
Operations Per Second) supercomputer with a 100 Exabyte
memory storage capacity (100 Quintillion bytes) is enough
hardware to simulate the entire human brain’s molecular
structure at faster-than-human speeds.
This type of hardware capacity (if using Moores Law)
is only about 20 years away since the fastest Cray
Roadrunner supercomputers already does 1.17 Petaflops.
Double that speed every 18 months and you get past that
magical threshold of 100 petaflops to equal human brainpower
in a little over 20 years which is right on schedule.
AND we could fit that sort of hardware in a
small building the size of a 4 bedroom house.
I should ask a pointed question, that since we know the
actual chemical biology of the brain pretty well,
who’s to know or say whether or not at some secret lab
say at the NSA (National Security Agency) that
a basic human brain isn’t already being emulated
on a CLUSTER of 1+ petaflop IBM Blue Gene/Q
supercomputers? At today’s prices, 100 such machines
would be about 10 BILLION dollars (i.e. $100 million a pop)
which is a drop in the bucket of the U.S.’s 2009
Department of Defence budget of $550 BILLION DOLLARS!
And who’s to say that emulated brain isn’t already working
on designing it’s future upgraded self to be fully installed
within mobile hardware that has arms, legs and sensory inputs?
Can we say TERMINATOR scenario!
Quote:
‘MULTIPLE hardware inputs such as many Internet connections,
multiple machine vision systems with pre-built font and
typeface recognition and audio inputs, the emulated human
brain could learn at a much more accelerated rate than humans’
You wouldn`t need type face recognition unless you wanted them to scan stuff in…otherwise the ‘terminator bot’ can just grab everything lately off the internet.
If Sawyer had any brains he’d know that blu ray is just another marketing ploy and probably wouldn’t have anything to do with his name being on the same page as blu ray – just give me dvd , let the others who don’t know any better have their blu ray, as for Sawyer,you’re not sticking your neck out and predicting a future, you’re just sticking your neck and acting like a fool. As for the future, those who remain ignorant of the past, are bound to repeat it (vhs & beta).
Er… Doug,
I have absolutely no idea what you are trying to say in regards to Sawyer’s “sticking his neck out”, but as to your analogy of VHS vs Beta (this was a format war between two COMPETING technologies in which VHS won out). You said you wanted to be given a DVD rather than a blu-ray since “blu-ray is just another marketing ploy”. Well according to your analogy, a few years ago you would have been saying “give me a VHS tape, because DVD is just another marketing ploy!”
These technologies are not marketing ploys, DVD was a superior technology to VHS so people naturally adopted it, and the same goes with blu-ray vs DVD… blu-ray is the superior tech. The only comparison you could make here would have been between blu-ray and HD-DVD, (which was blu-ray’s competing format) in which blu-ray won out (like VHS over Beta)… see where I’m going with this? Maybe you should have asked for a blu ray after all.
Wow!!! Did he just give away the theme of his next novel? It sounds very “intelligent”, but really now…he talks about a machine perhaps one day taking a look at mankind and deciding if it is grateful to us as it’s creator, or if mankind is an impediment! Is that really possible? Hmmmm…I guess if history were to repeat itself, which it often does, it might be. Isn’t that what the majority have done with God…OUR Creator!
No Colleen that is not what the majority of people have done with god. God is something that you have to believe in, since you can’t prove he/she/it exists (no, you can’t so please don’t make the typical ID arguments etc that you can). Machines would not have to take a “leap of faith” to know that we created them because it would be clear with minimal investigation that we had (not to mention that leaps of faith are totally counter to reason and logic, so I would tend to doubt a machine would bother to “have faith” about anything).
However, your point about impediments could be right on. A machine could possibly (although we can only speculate on how possible this is since we have no evidence to go on at this point) see us as an impediment to it’s survival and try to remove us because of it. Ironically though, this would be a very Darwinian action – a concept that we understand well and should be able to anticipate. So I would hope that we would be smart enough to put safeguards in place to ensure this could not happen. After all, history does show us that simply relying on gratitude hardly ensures you will receive it.
We tend to think only of the technical challenge of designing true artificial intelligence (including self-awareness). Just as important is developing ethics to go with this activity. I predict that by the end of this century the ethics of building androids will be a major social issue.
If we get that far I totally agree.
Anyone who actually works in the field of robotics and articial intelligence knows that Sawyer’s comments are ridiculous. Why not interview someone who actuallys knows the field. The wonders of organic intelligence becomes more apparent the more one works trying to construct an alternative model. Thinking processes that seem simple in basic organisms are actually highly sophisticated and are immensely difficult to replicate. Not only will we not see AI at any appreciable level in the next 20 years I doubt if we will ever see it in a manner similar to Terminator.
Although I find Mr. Sawyer’s comments entertaining, they are in reality just science fiction.
Anyone like myself who has spent the last 21 years in the hi-tech industry, visiting dozens of manufacturers, would realize that computers have just become more successful mimics. They have no insight whatsoever and contain less self-awareness than a spider. Increased computing power have allowed computers a wide variety of responses, in a short time span, so that it seems like a intelligent answer when actually it is the answer that matches the greates number of criteria input.
As for machines taking over, currently manufacturing has taken a massive back step as Chinese workers and even workers in North America perform more hands on assembly on the latest technology than even 20 years ago.
Having to keep up with the latest design advances means we don’t have time to retool assembly plants, luckily humans are adaptable with no retooling required and a brain capable of performing varied tasks without months of reprogramming.
The Terminator vision of the future is about as realistic in the short term as inter-stellar space flight.
As a species I believe we have little to worry about when it comes to being taken over by machines. If you are frightened of this simply unplug your computer.
Like
I’m not sure I agree with Mr Sawyers detective work on this subject. He reads things a lot like Ray Kurzweil with whom I also disagree. Certainly the widespread availability of key devices such as microchips and computerized design aids have been exponentially increasing the rate at which solutions to various applications can become available. Progress on the important scientific questions such as what are intelligence and consciousness move along at approximately the same rate as ever.
How can we say computers and robots will possess these attributes in a few years when we can’t yet describe what they are or how they are created?
this guy is an idiot.
I have read all Sawyers books and they are always entertaining. As a computer programmer for over 20 years I can say stuff we only dreamed of doing 20 years ago and childs play now days.
Another commented said that AI was not going to be possible in 20 years or ever, that migth be the case and it might not, if I had speculated we would be able to have the technology and programming capabilities in a cell phone 20 years ago I would have been laughed. Look at Star Trek and how William Shatner changed the world, most things that existing as imagination in the original Star Trek exist somewhere in the world…no one can predict the future and a point when you refer to Terminator seeing information on their EYE. Check out discovery channel from Dec 02, it starts around 9:28s into the clip
http://watch.ctv.ca/daily-planet/season-15/daily-planet—december-02-2009/#clip242285
Just think in 2 or 3 years that might be the size of or hidden inside a classes frame, or even a replacement contact lense….
Good work RJS and Sync love the stories.
I should add, I don’t think we will see a Skynet or anything or even believe that Terminators will take over the world or aggree with RJS’s “Predictions” of 20 years, I was just trying to point out that we don’t know what key discovery will change the world right now.
We are not just working in Linear times as some comments were sugesting but both linear and Giant Leaps. We are currently working in Linear times with computers and technology, but key discoveries of unknown origin (quantum computing) at this time could make our current technology and manufacturing/development process antiques (Big Blue vs PC) and moores laws no longer relevant.
I look at this article as more of a What If predictions not what will be. I do have to point out that he and another response does raise some good points about the ethics of computers and robots, merging the two together hopefully we will be guided by Asimov’s laws of robotics and futher apply them to computer applications…but if self aware AI were developed then the AI would just rewrite the code to bypass those laws :)
***IF*** A.I. does evolve as he says,chances are this new intelligence will emulate mankind for it will know nothing else ,hence our own destruction.
I agree with Gord, Mr. Sawyers comments are entertaining… but the only portrayal of “artificial intelligence” I see, is his own. Come to think of it… they sound more like regurgitated headlines from sundry old popular science publications. Even the infamous Mr. Moore has presently admitted that his model on microprocessing and microtechnology has stalled and needs to be redefined. Bio-computing today is nothing more than a query into the alternative of parallel processing, requiring litres of non-diverse bacteria to accomplish a simple predictable outcome. There is no existence of “bio-ware” to perform even the basics of computation, and the theorized quantities of “special bacteria” required for such a feat succumb to established models of occuring mutation, disease, and preservation… Stick to writing fiction Mr. Sawyer, science promotes your capabilities, not vice-versa.
Sawyer clearly just wants to stimulate interest in his novels by making these ridiculous remarks. If people believe something is possible, the more entertaining the story is, hence more book sales. Clever move by him; but, lets interview professionals that work with this technology, as opposed to sci-fi writers, next time.
My opinion is that we will not see this technology in our lifetime. However, I am also not an AI expert. Interesting discussion though.
I believe computer intelligence can only go as far as this: http://www.glasbergen.com/images/g674.gif
Yeah, good joke.
1) Fully misunderstanding of the concept of computer hardware and software limitations. Any program runs the direction it’s created for, variations are no-no taboo, i.e. it’s strictly impossible to ‘mutate’ as proposed.
2) Life (conscious/unconscious) described as:
- ability to re-create/recopy itself;
- ability to be stable and pro-active to protect itself against any destructive forces;
- ability for evolution.
Take away a human link from a smart machine ‘Life Chain’ and it would be just a dead agglomerate of metals, plastics and silicone chips, isn’t it?
However, progress in complexity and sophistication of software programs and algorithms gives us a glimpse of a hope to create some kind of ‘smarty’ that wouldn’t need a human whats-forever for it’s functioning and re-creation and maybe for evolution.
But not in ten years – too expensive.
Ed,
Sorry to say but all the your two statements above are already available, if you check out thehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm they actually discuss the topics you say can not happen in hardward and software. Genetic Algorithms have been able to approximate a number of things so I wouldn’t call it a joke if all your basing AI on is your couple of statements….AI is a lot more that what you mentioned.
:)
SOrry should have added, true AI is the ability to learn…people confuse self aware, inteligence with Consciousness. ‘wiki’ Consciousness is subjective experience or awareness or wakefulness or the executive control system of the mind.
A computer is already self-aware (POST on boot for example) doing system checks and stuff…knowing where the computer is and how or what internet connection they can accept. All of that exists today. The only thing missing in the ‘terminator’ scenario is the ability to learn, sure we can use genetic algorithms to solve problems faster but fo a computer at this stage to take outside imput and to form their OWN IDEA…I am going to stree OWN IDEA… about the idea is what really we are talking about, the rest of the posturing is just that, computers are ‘self aware’ and ‘self correcting’ to a point now.
Get a computer to actually start to learn new skills without a developer progaming anyting and you got a nobel prize and probable SkyNet (joke).
I found this article very entertaining and the questions were answered well. The future is strictly a prediction and everyone thinks of a different outcome. Sawyer’s beliefs may not align with yours, but that does not mean he is an idiot, as a few of you have claimed. His research into the subject is likey vast. You can’t write about stuff you don’t know or understand. Keep up the good work and lets hope the future is bright?
Interesting piece. However, metaphor and analogy can not substitute for reality and history. The Russians first exploded their primitive version of a “hydrogen bomb” in the mid 1950′s. It was as big as a small factory. The only way they could deliver a much less lethal atomic bomb to the American heartland was by bombers. The U.S. had an enormous advantage in aircraft and almost certainly could have stopped the attack force before it reached the US. The case with China is even more dramatic. In the 1950′s the US could have bombed China into oblivion without any fear of retaliation. Today China has nuclear weapons trained on the US and could destroy millions of Americans in less than an hour.
There is no qustion that America is less secure in the event of an actual war with either Russia or China than it was 50 years ago. Why did this happen? Does this history have any value today?
See my blog
http://warbyiq.com/ R. Peppe
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