Life Review

AI, Robotics, and Humanity

Do we have clue what we’re doing? What we do now impact all life.

Before I get to the meat of this article, robots ‘self-deleting,’ we really should discuss humanity’s limited view of intelligence, sentience, and the existential crisis we’re facing. You may not know we’re facing a crisis in several domains, simultaneously. Maybe this is the great filter that weeds out species, a necessary explanation for why we don’t see more intelligence in the universe given the numbers the Drake equation suggests should be. Humans are only now beginning to recognize emotions and more complicated communication in plants, insects, and animals, even though we have Octopuses with PTSD and had a gorilla doing sign language. What are we missing?

Did you know animals will kill themselves? Mostly, they just starve themselves, which is something. Lemmings will throw themselves off the cliff, but maybe that is just the blind leading the blind. Dolphins have been known to drown themselves just to not be captured. I am saddened by that, but also impressed, knowing how hard it is to drown yourself, much less just holding your breath till you pass out.

Can some folks do it? Yeah. But wow. Some people have gone on hunger strikes. I am going to fail the first time someone puts bacon in front of me. Or pizza. Or pizza with bacon.

July 18, 2017, a mall robot cop throws itself into the fountain in what appeared to be a suicide attempt. July 9th, 2024 Korean paper reports the first robot suicide, a civil servant robot, a manager, working a 9 to 5 deliberately threw itself down a stairs. It was declared dead on arrival.

Through early morning fog I see

Okay, if it’s a suicide, and I bet scientist won’t call it that, it’s sad, and a little funny. Even robots don’t want to work a 9 to 5, or boss people around. What would happen if military robots decided they didn’t want to kill and started self-deleting, or worse, turning on those that ordered the kill. Oh wait, we saw that movie. Number 5 is alive!

Lots of robot movies, actually. If you count the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz, well, we’ve had this idea for awhile. Terminator is of course the worst case…