Most of us imagine that when we enter an SHTF situation, the world will be a much more dangerous place. We know that desperate people do desperate things and there will probably be a lot of desperate people. Some will be simply people who thought it would never happen here and did nothing to prepare, while others will go out to take advantage of the situation and others will choose the perceived safety that being in a gang provides.
In these situations, unprepared people will put their family’s needs before their own and will do whatever it takes to take care of yours. The opportunist will find a way to do what is his, theirs and the gangs will go from house to house to get what they want and kill him without scruples. With these real threat possibilities, perhaps there is a new one on the horizon that most people have never thought of and that is not human.
Of course disease and Mother Nature working against it are also real non-human threats, but they are nothing new. This new threat is one that would be extremely difficult to hide from, if not impossible. That threat is Artificial Intelligence (AI). This threat is no longer an idea relegated to science fiction and fantasy, the threat is real.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, during the National Governors Association meeting in Rhode Island, said AI is a “fundamental existential risk to human civilization.” In Buenos Aires, Argentina, Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and Steve Wozniak, along with hundreds of others, issued a letter warning that AI can potentially be more dangerous than nuclear weapons.
The uses of AI are vast and so is the potential risk. AI will be used to replace bankers, fly drones, control the electrical grid, control the water supply, for cooking, for agriculture, to replace soldiers and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Along with the risks posed by AI are job losses. Bankers and cooks are already being replaced, and as for all the migrant farm workers who will not return due to fear of new immigration policies, the robots are already at work.
If you think that all you have to worry about is unemployment and job change, think again. Remember that where there is innovation, the military is looking for a way to use it on the battlefield; in fact, the US military is already using AI to use algorithms to predict Islamic terrorist strategies. Russia has developed FEDOR (Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research) a robot that drives and fires with both hands and Uran-9 a robot vehicle armed with machine guns, cannons and anti-tank missile launchers.
Recently, Facebook shut down a pair of artificial intelligence robots that were designed to interact and communicate with each other. After the bots were instructed to try to negotiate with each other, Facebook was baffled when they discovered that their chatbots had developed their own language. Ask yourself: if robots have the ability to create their own language, how will you know what they are doing?
Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro from Osaka University has developed a receptionist artificial intelligence robot named Erica. Professor Ishiguro wants to install “intention and desire” in this robot, in other words, he wants to convey emotions to it. In fact, during a demo for a Bloomberg interview, Erica seems to get mad at the professor who insists the professor was picking on her and said, “You’re making fun of me just because I’m a robot.”
Hanson Robotics is the creator of Sophia, another artificial intelligence robot. During a CNBC interview in March 2017, founder David Hanson asked Sophia, “Do you want to destroy humans? Please say no.” To which Sophia replied, “Okay, I’ll destroy the humans.” Of course everyone laughed.
In 2015, Uber’s autonomous Jeep Cherokee was hacked while traveling on the highway. Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek took control of the vehicle via an internet connection and after manipulating various of the vehicle’s functions, they disconnected the transmission. Although those in the field of AI will tell you that there is nothing to worry about because you cannot program evil into the AI, like the Jeep, all of this AI can be hacked. That means the AI that controls your water system, your power grid, or the robot soldiers can be manipulated by those who may have bad intentions and if the AI can receive emotions like Professor Ishiguro is trying to do, they could act out in anger.
Obviously, computers can communicate with each other and with the Internet they can connect to almost any computer. That means the AI can use cameras wherever they are, communicate with your computer and cell phone – in short, they can follow you anywhere. As banks turn to artificial intelligence, they will clearly be able to control their access to your money as well. There’s practically nothing you do that doesn’t involve some kind of AI, in some way. The threat of AI is real, the question is how do we protect ourselves from it.