Artificial Intelligence

For most of my life, I have been irrationally (really?) freaked out about robots. I can’t say when or how it started, but I am so anti-droid that:

I refuse to entertain the notion of investing in a robotic vacuum cleaner to make my former house elf’s life easier.

On meeting the new photocopier, I was immediately reminded of Star Trek’s M5 and vehemently warned our office’s tech advisor against unplugging it at source because “it’ll fry you where you stand!”

My favourite Alan Parsons Project album, I, Robot, tells the sorry tale of machines becoming our masters and, gee, who saw that coming?

Any Hollywood attempt to make androids our friends is less believable than any Hollywood attempt to make androids our enemies.

I don’t understand our obsession with making machines smarter than we are, with giving them personalities, or with trusting them to remember their place and to stay in it.

Ironically, a robot may have changed my mind about the inherent evil code-named “artificial intelligence”.

Type “Hitchbot” into any search engine and a plethora of pictures pops up, each of a funky little compilation of parts parked roadside in any number of locations. Developed in Canada and set loose to test the nature of humans when interacting with machines, Hitch travelled across the country, spent time in Europe, and started a journey across the USA which, sadly, ended last week in Philadelphia. In a thicker twist of irony, the amiable little droid was vandalized beyond hope of repair in the city of brotherly love.

Robophobia notwithstanding, I have problems with vandalism against any inanimate object—without the psychoanalysis, it’s a show of disrespect and does nothing to further the argument that humans are a superior species. Programmed though its personality was, Hitchbot was also harmless. Beating it to death was a show of bullying cowardice as much as it was an act of vandalism. Unfortunately, a violent end has—for the moment, at least—eclipsed all those good folks who drove it from town to town, pausing for photo ops with their kids in front of national landmarks. It’s kinda sad that I only learned about the ʼbot’s adventure when it was over, and sadder still that it was only news because it ended with an act of mindless savagery.

Intelligence? I’m pretty sure we’re the ones who are faking it.