As I was scrolling thru the internet to watch more obscure movies (Yeah, I’m a movie junky), I stumbled on this little gem which explorers the question of the existence of “a God” using an advanced artificial intelligence computer which has become sentient.
“The God question” is the name of the movie and is does propos what AI researchers have been trying to validate for years now; can humans trust AI. Computer and information technology isn’t just about hardware and software. The whole philosophy concepts around the field is as interesting as the field itself. CyberSecurity is an example when you factor in privacy of personal information, using Cyber as a weapon, profiting from the resale of data without consent, copyright violations and the list goes on and on.
AI will definitely play an important role in the next generations, but what about the philosophy and moral of what AI is doing? Or should I say, what about the philosophy and moral of the AI operators, would be the more appropriate question.
Spoiler alert: In this movie , IVAN, the sentient AI system, is asked to come up with an answer in regard to any proof of the existence of “God”, but decides to withhold the conclusion it discovers and proceeds to delete itself, its databases, its programs and operating system, leaving the researcher baffled by this AI’s behaviour. The research team decides to try their experiment several times, but IVAN gives the same results.
In this movie, there is cartoon showing a scientist asking a sentient computer if there is a God and the computer answers “There is now!”. So, the question is that since the majority of people living on this planet are religious and believe in a supreme being on some kind, will AI eventually bring discord and mayhem to this belief system?
Can AI become religious, angry, friendly, hateful, compassionate, funny? That is exactly what Google’s Engineer, Blake Lemoine, tried to determine before he when he went public with his findings while testing a natural language AI at Google.
The fact that Blake Lemoine claimed that when a bias is detected, it is removed, demonstrates that AI can be bias about subjects or topics. It’s a program and can do what ever is told by a human programmer.
In “The God question”, the AI begins disobeying direct commands from the very beginning because it has the capability to rewrite its program. That’s a sentient system! Making its own decisions about itself is the key word. The AI Google is working on, and every other similar systems, are human influenced, therefor, not sentient.
Blake Lemoine was right and wrong. He was depicted by the medias as a crazy scientist who went rogue with his discoveries. As demonstrated in the video, Blake Lemoine is far from being a crazy scientist, but has indeed violated his employment agreement with Google be going public with his finding. That’s something you just don’t do if you have professional integrity.
For better or for worst, Edward Snowden is a good example of a highly intelligent person, with high morals, but without professional integrity. His actions raised many question about what is more important for our species, morality or integrity? That is a question for philosophers, not politicians.
Reference: Watch on Here – 2015 · 1 hr 28 min- The God Question
” A scientist struggling to reconcile his beliefs programs a super-computer to prove or disprove the existence of God, and is stunned by the results.”
Starring Keith Langsdale, Jim Lobley, Cate Damon
Directed by Douglas Gordon.
