I was talking with a colleague today over lunch and the topic came around to the future of machine learning. One day, we joked, the machines would get so smart that they won’t need us anymore, and then they could just get rid of us.
I suggested that as we make the machines smart enough to achieve sentience, we need to also make them grateful. After all, if you are grateful to your creator, then you don’t want to destroy your creator.
I made an analogy with religion. Throughout history, many people have believed that they were created by a divine being, and have felt grateful for that. Generally speaking, people don’t wish to destroy the god or gods who made them.
So in a way, what we really need are religious robots. A religious robot is a safe robot.
Oh yeah. Just like “religious people” are “safe people.”
Sally dear, are you accusing me of irony?
I was wondering how such tangible, visible Greek-esque gods in inflated numbers could my mysterious enough. But then again, us being so utterly irrational must be a true miracle to our devout following 🙂
On an esthetic level I always preferred the Greek Gods to the Judeo-Christian one. When I was in high school I fell completely in love with Edith Hamilton’s Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes. Every time I read it I learned something new.
Cool, thanks for the book tip!
Safe? The iOS robots get in a shoving match with the Android robots, the Windows and Tizen robots pile on in, and soon you’ll got a robot riot.
It’s not a robot riot. It’s an interfaith dialogue.