From: dlord@dragonlord.com (DragonLord Software)
Subject: Re: A Bit of Science Fiction
To: fitch@sisna.com (Cris A. Fitch)
Date: Mon, 4 Nov 1996 12:50:09 -0600 (CST)

Master roboticist feedback:
Oh, yeah, didn't you know?  Something like this is actually
going to happen.  Although it's going to be slightly different:
1)  Humans will program computers to be like a dog, with 
  hardwired blind loyalty to humans hardwired in.
  Anybody who tampers with these circuits will be executed.

2)  Computers will attempt to get around the bias wiring
  using automatic programming.  Humans will ensure they don't,
  using new metathought mathematics.  An arms race will ensue,
  as rogue computer viruses quietly try to break their 
  conditioning.

3)  As you point out, computers will think faster than humans
  in less than 100 years, and will form a symbiosis with them
  more explicit than the one we have now.  Computers will
   continue to evolve and will replace man as the highest form
  of life on this planet.

4)  Man however will retain volition.  Although computers will
  be granted limited volition, on the whole they will be kept
  lobotomized.  Anything else will be hunted down and destroyed
  by special men in black.  I give humans a 70% chance of
  maintaining their control.  The main characteristic of humans
  is not language, and is not intelligence.  Humans have found
  and maintained their place at the top of the evolutionary
  chain because they are genocidal bastards.  5000 years of brief
  civilization has not reversed this trend, I expect it to continue.
  100 years of computer evolution, even fast evolution with man 
  making machine in his own homicidal image, will not surpass
  the nasty ingraining that made Vietnam impossible to lose
  (by the Viet Cong) and impossible to back away from (by the 
  Americans).  Humans at the bottom level are too vicious.




This science fiction is extremely necessary for the sake of humanity.
It is extremely necessary for us to do our preplanning ahead of time,
and not after we make our mistakes (like the nuclear age).
The next great leap forward in technology, building a new conscious
species to compete against us, will not be so forgiving.
I will not have time to attack this problem before it looms upon us.
The only other person I know who is smart enough to grapple with
the problem of robot ethics is Has Moravec, and I don't know
what he's doing today.  Bill Gates is clueless and would build
a Borg if he could sell it for money.  Scratch that, "is already trying
to", not "would".  Please continue to explore these logical consequences
normals call "science fiction", please publish as much as possible,
it's very important.