The Terminator came for Sarah Connor, and we said nothing.

“Have you heard of DeepMind?” I asked my friend, “ It’s an artificial intelligence company based in London.” “No…”, she said, “but speaking of AI, I started watching Ex Machina last night.”

This is a conversation I have had, or overheard, many times in some form or another. One person will bring up artificial intelligence, and the other will immediately jump to artificially intelligent (even sentient) robotics and, ultimately, science fiction. The way these conversations tend to go seems to range from letting it go completely, to anger, frustration, and even some screaming. I decided to let it go in this instance.

Whether or not you’re an AI purist who will snap at anyone who dares to equate all AI to dangerous futuristic robots, it is easy to understand why people have clung to humanoid machines to anchor their knowledge of a broad and complex subject. Rather than being the pedantic ravings of a tech snob, the purpose of this post is to explore what history and science fiction can tell us about these new technological advancements, and why it’s important to learn about the realities of the technologies that increasingly shape our lives.

This is not the first time we have experienced an advancement in technology that has caused us, as a society, to have to reassess who we are and what we are capable of. In fact, history is littered with what we now consider relics that have changed the fabric of our social existence.

The telegraph changed the human experience of time and space. Suddenly, one individual could send a message to another almost instantaneously, over long distances. Although this might seem a laborious mode of communication to us now, try and conceptualize how radically this changed the world as it could be experienced.

The television changed the way people experienced not only the things they saw on their screens, news and comedy etc., but also the patterns of their daily lives. Families came home and sat together to watch the 6 o’clock news. Communities sat in joy, fear, anger or sadness as world events unfolded in their living rooms.

Yes, we have seen numerous examples of how technological shifts affect humanity — from the written word to artificial intelligence — but how is our current historical moment different? There is no denying that this rate of technological progress is unprecedented. Despite all that history has to teach us, we are careening blindly into the future, into the unpredictable and unknowable.

The future, as a concept, has become increasingly less distant. It has, however, remained a black box, impenetrable to the human eye. This is not to say that we cannot make educated predictions about new technologies, but rather that we cannot know how these technologies will be adopted or received by the people who use them. In thinking about the future of AI, we must think about it not only in terms of how AI might change the people who use it, but also how people will change and influence its development and potential uses.

This can be a scary thought, historically humans have a tendency of bringing the darkness out of technological advances. Scarier still is the idea of a machine that surpasses us in intellectual ability, morphing into something unstoppable and unpredictable. This shifting and unprecedented relationship has been the topic of numerous science fiction films for a reason. As an inherently creative animal, we tend to work through fears, anxieties, and frustrations through stories. These narratives are important to consider, as they paint for us a rich landscape of utopic and dystopic futures, all within the realm of possibility.

The dystopia we all know and love.

There is a truly enjoyable morbid curiosity to seeing our own impending doom. Particularly when said doom is being served, or represented, by something (someone?) that looks, feels, and speaks like us, but is fundamentally not like us. ‘They’ make us look inside of ourselves, question what makes us human, what gives us the right to be ‘us’ at all. Blade Runner, The Terminator, I, Robot, Black Mirror, Westworld, Humans, the list goes on; proving time and again our fascination with peering into our uncanny reflections.

Of course these films are about more than artificial intelligence and the progress of technology, they allow us to examine issues of race, gender, sexuality, inequality, and morality. However, in terms of AI in particular, we can say that these narratives bring up some fundamental questions about existence in the face of exponential technological growth.

If a machine can become sentient and experience emotions, solve problems, and achieve autonomy, does this mean we have to redefine humanity, human characteristics, and even the experience of emotions?

Will our fear and resentment towards these machines cause us to turn to our heart of darkness, and bring out our most primal and animalistic side?

Fundamentally, as Intel’s resident anthropologist Genevieve Bell notes, this comes down to a fear of being irrelevant, and of seeing what we are both capable and incapable of when faced with our own irrelevance.

Japan, a utopia for humans and robots alike.

In both fiction and industry, Japan displays a very different relationship to robotics in general, humanoid robots in particular, and AI by association. This is due to a number of things — an ageing population means that Japan has had to look to humanoid caring robots as a solution to an impending problem; robotics are a vital part of the Japanese economy; and the religious Shinto tradition posits that nonhuman entities possess spirits and deserve respect.

In popular culture humanoid robots and artificial intelligence have been normalised through Astro Boy, a popular manga and film character — a boy-like robot — who keeps the peace in a world where humans and robots live in harmony. He fights robot hating humans and robots gone berserk, presenting a world that reflects struggles we are familiar with, but in which peace and coexistence between humans and nonhumans is not only possible, but the normal ‘state of things’ that must be preserved.

A boy robot? A boy robot?! A boy robot!

The fate of humanity is in your hands.

So, what problems is AI currently being harnessed to solve? Through working at Founders Factory, I’ve had a chance to be introduced to some amazing new startups in this space. They serve as useful examples of the practical applications being developed, and how much they vary from their pop culture equivalents.

ilumr recently joined the Founders Factory accelerator program, and is an AI product that helps organisations better understand and predict patterns of behaviour that affect them. illumr turns complex datasets into understandable 3D patterns to reveal insights that all other analytical tools and methodologies may miss. To date, illumr has worked with government departments, large financial institutions and housing organisations.

Iris.ai, another company currently in the same accelerator program, helps researchers search and map over 60 million open accesses research papers. By pulling together relevant resources across different disciplines, Iris.ai helps research teams discover unexpected sources, and become more efficient.

Rather than creating an unstoppable machine that looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger, these companies and many others in this space, are harnessing the principles of artificial intelligence in order to sort through and finds patterns within vast amounts of data that the human mind has neither the time, nor capacity to make sense of. Why is it important to understand this? Because, much like the Terminator, all technologies are inscribed with the inherent biases of those who create it. As the users of these products and services, it is our responsibility to hold their creators accountable, to ensure that these products are being designed ethically and in the best interest of the user.

History has taught us the extent to which technological advancements can change the fabric of our lives. Fiction allows us to experience our greatest hopes and fears in the face of this change. But as we continue careening into an unprecedented future of technological advancement, it is up to all of us to ensure that the reality we come to experience doesn’t involve a naked and murderous Arnold Schwarzenegger robot appearing out of thin air.

Resources

• - ‘Humanity’s greatest fear is about being irrelevant’ — Genevieve Bell
• - The AI Revolution — Tim Urban
• - Why Japanese Love Robots — Christopher Mims