Confusing the Robot Takeover and the robots’ masters’ takeover


Even Steve Wozniak makes this mistake:

The artificial intelligence that will control the world used to worry Wozniak, he told a technology conference. But he has realised that it will be good for us because robots will opt to keep us as part of nature.

So far, there is NO INDICATION that any kind of robot, or any other kind of technology is going to be autonomous in any way, shape, or form, any time soon.

But there is OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE EVERYWHERE that lots of people — typically by means of the organizations they run and the products that those companies build or deploy — want to use robots and other technologies to control you and me and the rest world.

Is Robbie-The-Supposedly-Authonomous-Robot really taking over my life if he is ultimately built, maintained, supervised and upgraded by Google? Even if he looks autonomous? Really?

It will be a long, long way until companies like Google surrender this control over supposedly-autonomous technology. A much longer way than it will take the technology to be capable of being autonomous.

Let’s not go from “the sky is falling, the robots are taking over” to “we’re going to be happy as their pets” in one step. There is a “the sky is falling, *people* are using technology to take our lives” step in between; a step that may well last a very long time.

, ,