I think a lot of us, when we muse about artificial intelligence, fret that machines will become sentient and self-reliant. When we think about robots, we worry that, like Transformers, they will be hulking, dangerous machines or, like in Westworld, androids who can crush our windpipes.
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This is, I suppose, as good as time as any to discuss sex with robots. I've been putting it off for a while now because it's, you know, sex with robots. But the topic can no longer be avoided. Talk of making the machine/beast with two backs is everywhere these days.
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In the past few months we've heard the term "machine learning" bandied about by Google execs, computer scientists and nerdish blowhards at pool parties. The phrase is used to explain why digital assistants like Google Now and Siri have gotten so much better at understanding what we mean, why Google Photos can find images of flowers so well and how even our watches seem to listen better than an average 14-year-old.
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On a recent flight to Vancouver I had a chance to watch a few episodes of the TV show Humans, along with the movie Ex Machina. They both, in their own ways, deal with the time when robots approach, equal and then surpass humans. Their neural circuits become infected, as it were, with a virus that corrupts their logic and renders them aware of themselves, and their possible futures. You know that's going to end badly.
How do you build a robot overlord? Piece by piece. Let's look at how we're doing. The last year has been a kind of watershed for "plastic pals that are fun to be with," as Douglas Adams once called sentient androids with the brains the size of planets. In all sorts of different, but related, fields, human beings have made incredible strides at putting ourselves out of a job at the top of the food chain, cognition-wise.
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