Nevermind the technological challenges, do we have any choice in whether or not we create artificial intelligence?

If one takes the view of evolution, probably not. The one thing that ultimately made us the hottest stuff on this planet is the new and improved brain we have over the chimps. Otherwise, as animals, we suck. Making tools and weapons had more to do with our intellect than anything else -- chimps can make a primitive kind of tool but you don't see them designing space shuttles. We got this way because we figured out you could use a rock for more than just cracking open nuts. An opposing thumb and the ability to walk upright didn't keep us from being lion food in the early days. Has anything other than our brains evolved since we decided upright bipedalism and the opposing thumb were our final answer? We're at the end of our line. We're it, fellow hominids. The sharks, the tigers, the wasp, the alligator, the gray wolf, the dolphin and us. The ultimate in primate engineering. We can't go any further, but evolution doesn't quit. So maybe it started over with our most successful trait. It isn't a conscious choice. We've hit the wall, and like anything that stagnates and decays something else will grow from the slime of our rotting corpses. Our brains are the primordial ooze from which AI will gather itself up and live.

If one takes the view that creating AI is a conscious choice, those with a fear of what it might become will ensure that a climate of hatred and terror will dog the entire enterprise. There will be attempts to limit or eliminate any such work, comparable to current fears involving cloning and genetic engineering. But like these two areas of research Artificial Intelligence research will not be containable. None of the newest technologies are containable. Nanotech, biotech, AI -- a nanotech "laboratory" could be contained in something the size of a flash drive. Think an airport baggage screener will find that on the day before Christmas? Much less a vial of cultured smallpox disguised as a bottle of perfume? A laptop full of computer code won't even rate a second glance.

We may want to stick our heads in the sand with regards to all this but the simple brutal fact of the matter is that these things are going to happen whether we want it to or not. We can bitch and moan and scream about it all we want, someone somewhere will not have our scruples and fears. Someone somewhere will see only profit and a chance for power. The rest of the world does not share our fear of the future. They're not going to allow our fear to dictate their national science and technology agendas.

Does anyone remember that it was the Russians who were first in space? Or that it was a German who gave us the Theory of Relativity? Or that the great founders of rocketry were named Oppenheimer, Von Braun, Tsiolkovsky, and only one of them -- Goddard -- was American?

The only thing the United States is a world leader in is ignorance and intellectual apathy.

The AIs will happen. Just that I think we had better prepare ourselves for the very real possibility that their first language will be Japanese.


'Nuff Said.