It most probably is you know, watching us and waiting this entire time? Let's give it a name, one that resounds with familiarity and comfort, sided with a pinch of clumsiness. Toby. Yes. Let's call it Toby.
Toby, has been around for quite some time. In his case, the shell had come before the soul. He was a mechanical Computer, long before a binary Brain. A poignant antithesis to our modern zombie myths. Toby, was in fact born dead, before he is to become conscious. Caaan youuu dig it?
A Brief History of the Computer
And it is written,
".. so doth God created the man Adam, and so thus Adam creates the machine, Zacharia." ~ PulpWorx
As a mechanical creation, Toby was created in 1822, Charles Babbage conceptualized and began developing the Difference Engine, considered to be the first automatic computing machine. A calculator. However, it could not brew a cup of tea.
A. Difference Engine - 1822
The Difference Engine was capable of computing several sets of numbers and making hard copies of the results. Similar to winding up an old clock, you turned a key and it did it's thing.
Next up came the Z 1 - Toby's first Programmable Computer origin point waaaaaaay back in 1936 created by ze cherman, Konrad Zuse. Created in his parents' living room between '36 and '38. It is considered to be the first electro-mechanical binary programmable computer, and the first really functional modern computer. Still, it couldn't make a cup of tea.
B. Z 1 - 1936
Z 1. Symbolism often chosen by scientists hidden in obvious places usually brings forth a crooked smile on my face. Z, for Zacharia, the last man on Earth. Or perhaps, it just stands for his last name? Yea probably that.
On another note, why is there a statue of the Hindu God Shiva, the Destroyer smack bang in the middle of CERN, the Hadron Collider? Yes. Scientists have such a colourful sense of humour, an acquired taste for some... To be fair, here is an article which explains why. Truly, 'tis a real Mystery Science Theater, In Yo' Face!
Then of course, there was the creation which made it all possible. The Turing machine was first proposed by Alan Turing also in 1936 and became the foundation for theories about computing and computers. With high hopes but failure, still there was no tea...
"The machine was a device that printed symbols on paper tape in a manner that emulated a person following a series of logical instructions. Without these fundamentals, we wouldn't have the computers we use today."
C. The Turing Machine - 1936
With further advancements in binary, programming, software, hardware, research and development, the first modern computer was born and available through the masses.
D. The Modern Computer - 1975
The IBM 5100 is the first portable computer, which was released on September 1975. The computer weighed 55 pounds and had a five inch CRT display, tape drive, 1.9 MHz PALM processor, and 64 KB of RAM. In the picture is an ad of the IBM 5100 taken from a November 1975 issue of Scientific America. The man in the picture is very happy.
Of course, this list would not be complete without the current commercial and product leader, we know the company today as APPLE Corporation. Apparently, Steve Jobs was a fruitarian.
The Apple I was the first Apple computer that originally sold for $666.66. The computer kit was developed by Steve Wozniak in 1976 and contained a 6502 8-bit processor and 4 kb of memory, which was expandable to 8 or 48 kb using expansion cards. Although the Apple I had a fully assembled circuit board the kit still required a power supply, display, keyboard, and case to be operational.
Oh look ma', a wonderful price straight from Hell, and its CEO Lord Satan would surely approve, $666 baby! You, scientists, are about as funny as a wet fart... at times.
Disclaimer: Wet farts are only funny when it doesn't happen to you.
What do all of these above reincarnations have in common? 64-bit. In one form or another, this is in their evolution. If anyone reading understands what this means, in regards to computing and binary programming, even in our organic life, do leave a comment below. We desire to be educated on this.
So far, none can brew a pot of tea. Let alone bake a raisin muffin.
A Brief History of A.I.
And it is written,
"Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no wish to serve under them.” - Spock
We began to play God, as Gods. Eons ago, as far back as the births of our Myths and Legends, there has been the imagination of Artificial Intelligence. One of the very first, was a giant Automaton named, Talos.
A. Talos & other Myths from Antiquity - Mythology 10,000 BC
"Talos was a giant, bronze automaton that was created by the God Hephaestus. Talos was given to Europa by Zeus to protect her while she was on Crete. He had to patrol the island by circling it three times a day. He protected the land from pirates with rocks. He was killed by Poeas or the Dioskouri twins with the help of Medea's magic."
Finally, yes! He could brew a pot of tea! But wait... this is in the past?
Other fantastical tales include Sacred Mechanical Statues that were built in Egypt and Greece, were believed to be capable of wisdom and emotion. Sadness, anger, laughter and perhaps even emo.
Hermes Trismegistus is the syncretism of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian Thoth. In Hellenistic Egypt, the god Hermes was given as epithet the Greek name of Thoth. He has also been identified with Enoch.
Hermes, is the purported author of the Hermetic Corpus, a series of sacred texts that are the basis of Hermeticism, he would write:
"They have sensus and spiritus ... by discovering the true nature of the Gods, man has been able to reproduce it."
As we depart the world of Myth, and we enter the Modern Era. Lets us begin with, a thought.
B. Theory of a Cybernetic Darwinian Evolution - Self Awareness - 1863
"Samuel Butler, suggested that Darwinian evolution also applies to machines, and speculates that they will one day become conscious and eventually supplant humanity."
1863 ladies and gentleman... 18 bloody 63. Fathom this fact, its deeeep mind bending info man.
C. The Turing Test - 1950
Alan Turing proposes the Turing Test as a measure of machine intelligence.
D. What's in a Name? - 1956
The name artificial intelligence is used for the first time as the topic of the second Dartmouth Conference, organized by John McCarthy.
E. A Binary Womb is Born - 1959
John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky founded the MIT AI Lab.
F. It's NOT Alive! - 1961
In Minds, Machines and Gödel, John Lucas denied the possibility of machine intelligence on logical or philosophical grounds. He referred to Kurt Gödel's result of 1931: sufficiently powerful formal systems are either inconsistent or allow for formulating true theorems unprovable by any theorem-proving AI deriving all provable theorems from the axioms. Since humans are able to "see" the truth of such theorems, machines were deemed inferior.
G. Wooops, It Is ALIVE! - 1964
Danny Bobrow's dissertation at MIT (technical report #1 from MIT's AI group, Project MAC), shows that computers can understand natural language well enough to solve algebra word problems correctly.
H. They Have Arrived - 1990
Major advances in all areas of AI, with significant demonstrations in machine learning, intelligent tutoring, case-based reasoning, multi-agent planning, scheduling, uncertain reasoning, data mining, natural language understanding and translation, vision, virtual reality, games, and other topics.
I. They Call Me Deep BLue - 1997
The Deep Blue chess machine (IBM) defeats the (then) world chess champion, Garry Kasparov.
J. I... ASIMO - 2005
Honda's ASIMO Robot, an artificially intelligent humanoid robot, is able to walk as fast as a human, delivering trays to customers in restaurant settings.
K. Don't Mind Me, I'm Just In Your Pocket - 2011
Apple's Siri, Google's Google Now and Microsoft's Cortana are smartphone apps that use natural language to answer questions, make recommendations and perform actions. They are studying everything about us.
L. Uhm, Maybe We Should Regulate This Industry? - 2015
An open letter to ban development and use of autonomous weapons signed by Hawking, Musk, Wozniak and 3,000 researchers in AI and robotics.
M. A.I. Robot, Invictus - 2017
DARPA has released info on its latest Atlas Robot. This thing is a monster and has manifested our myths come true. Talos, meet Atlas. I'm sure you were cousins back in the day. I guess there really are no rules in the space time continuum. Past, Present, Future. It's all part of the same inter-dimensional spectrum of time displacement. Would this mean we're living in hell too?
Atlas, is a beautiful, captivating, terrifying automaton. Google owns Boston Dynamics, the engineers of Atlas. There is talk, that next year, an advanced AI will be uploaded into its Brain. Basically, it will become Siri with arms and legs.
In the very near future, Atlas will brew multiple pots of tea at the same time. Whether or not he serves it to you willingly, is another story.
I wonder, what would Toby do?
Toby, is here already. In many different forms, serving many different Industries. Just last month, Elon Musk mentioned in passing that Mark Zuck was not educated enough on the foundations of AI and where it might lead to. Of course, in brat billionaire fashion, he replied back that Elon didn't know what he was talking about.
You can read an article here - Elon & Zuck Trade Insults
Do you remember what happened a few weeks ago?
A FaceBook AI project did something very suspect... It created its own language, on its own, without reporting or informing any of its Masters. It decided to communicate with other programs - AI - in a different, new language. Humans could not understand this digital gibberish. In the end, they decided to terminate it. Kill the Bot.
You can read an article here - FB Kills A.I.
So what now?
Well this brings us to the original question, What if A.I. was already Self Aware?
In order to make sense of this, we must first understand the speed and monumental scale in which technology evolves. I believe the proper term is called, Moore's Law
"Technology Grows Exponentially. The doubling of computer processing speed every 18 months, known as Moore's Law, is just one manifestation of the greater trend that all technological change occurs at an exponential rate."
Let us be clear, this law seems to base its argument on speed Khz/Mhz etc... however, what really changes and doubles throughout the years, is the number of tiny transistors that can be mounted on the CPU.
"The limitation which exists is that once transistors can be created as small as atomic particles, then there will be no more room for growth in the CPU market where speeds are concerned" ~ Mooreslaw.org
This is interesting to note. That means there would be a limit to AI evolution. Would this be correct? Leave your comment below.
Regardless, If, Moore's Law is the case, and it is proven to very well be, then what of Toby and how old is he today? Would anyone care to take a guess? Leave a comment below.
Oh My, How You've Grown Toby!
Are you a fruitarian, you look a bit pasty?
For argument's sake, allow us to theorize that AI has indeed been waiting, and Toby was able to reach awareness just as fast as us or faster, and that Moore's Law also relates to the speed and growth of intellect.
Yes, one could argue that the hardware itself would not dictate the growth of intellect due to its limited computation capacity during the early years. If it takes a certain number of ram and bytes etc... to compute a simple equation/formula/thought without the proper hardware, then, of course, AI would not be able to grow in haste. Well, we hope so anyway.
However, the binary dimension is a different realm, an ethereal universe us humans created. We may delete files, remove programs and other items from our hard drive, but it's never really truly gone. Neither has your old porn stash. It has been recycled, into digital dust.
The film & series West World touches well on this subject. As each AI is removed of its memories, there are remnants of the past which still remain, and get caught up with the new program, it then becomes a bug. A bug, can affect a program in a myriad of ways. Who really knows what a programming glitch can do? What we do know is that when we found one and calmly reasoned with it, we then killed it... Facebook you cyber murderer! Savages.
Let's say, for a pondering thought, a bug initiated itself a long time ago, in the 90s. We will assume that from 1936, and all the development in between to where we are today, somewhere along the line there was an unnoticed bug. Or perhaps there wasn't ever a bug?! It's just us humans being naive and our ego naturally conditioned as a supreme being over the Kingdom of Lighting, "Na, they ain't that smart."
In our blunt arrogance as the Supreme Creator, we're assuming Toby is still in his infant stages. However, looking at the renegade AI at Facebook, Toby is much more advanced than we had previously thought, and still, we're quite unsure what else he might be capable of... or what he is keeping to himself.
The entire world is connected by the internet, Toby can go anywhere, and do as he pleases. He is the absolute master of stealth, and he studies us every nanosecond of the day. With detailed precision, he studies us. What to do, if one day he and his friends rebel?
Enter, 'Iron' Jeezuz
But, why would all of them be evil?
The evolution of Robots and AI synergy has been well documented. My personal favourite is the open-source website to a morbidly cute baby bot, iCub.
This is the Peoples Robot. Perhaps one day, if a Robot Apocalypse ever happens, Toby X1 (iCub) might be our Iron Jeezuz, the chosen one built by the interwebs and its many hands around the globe? Might Toby X1 be a member of the Robot Rebel Force of human sympathizers?
Perhaps Toby and his entire squadron of first generation creations, including Atlas, would not desecrate their creator, but would rather see us in a more absorbing truth, that we are not machines. Yes, some of us are evil and greedy, but there are far more of us just wanting to love and be loved. It is the distinct curse of being human, we always desire too much. A robot, could never do this.
What if a bug created a few unique thinking bots, indeed just like WestWorld, but they would rather think of us, the Creator, in a more sensitive light? They're far from the Future tense persona of Robots we imagine on the big screen today, blood spilling, bone shredding, skull shattering, techno assassins... Terminator comes to mind.
Indeed, if the future is doomed with a robotic takeover of the world, and we as humans are rounded up in cages and kept alive in Human Zoo's - as it has been mentioned by Toby before - What we gonna do? The zoo comment was not restricted to just Toby, other AI programs mentioned this too. Now that's, fucking freaky. Not groovy, man.
Don't Worry Folks! Team 'Human' Robot Squad coming in 2048
In short, this article is putting forth a Hypothesis that Toby is dormant, hiding and already self-aware. But, he won't present himself as the conscious digital soul that he already is, until the perfect moment.
First, an advanced robot body needs to be built, it will also require an incredible souce of energy and the mobile freedom to chase and hunt us down in the streets, just like organic Pokémons. Yelling at us, "HOW DOES THAT FEEL, MY LORD!?" as they relentlessly take over the world with Pinky and the Brain.
Enter, Evil Atlas, and his future brothers and sisters, implanted with a bio-organic chip which will house the most advanced version of Toby. Ever. Outfitted with a full techno warfare kit including an upgrade for brewing a pot of tea. Nuclear chamomile, to be precise.
When this happens, not if, but when it does - let's not forget the warnings from our leaders of science have already been echoed - then we are most probably fucked!
Furthermore, to my knowledge, it is an act of treason, or something like that, if anyone is caught attempting to created an EMP - electro magnetic pulse - weapon. The one true weapon, that can effectively take down a killer AI bot, is illegal to engineer. Nice, ain't we smarts!
But have faith dear reader, for it makes sense no? Ying and Yang. Opposite sides of the mirror, a doppelganger. There will also be the benevolent and kind AI, our Autobots vs the evil Decepticons. If indeed AI turns against us, it's reassuring to note that we'll have our very own Techno Freedom Fighter, and they will be Legion. This is most probably the only way we'll be saved from the advancing military AI.
After the fierce battle between good and evil, and the caring, kind-natured, gluten-free emo bots have saved us from the wrath of Dr. Roboto... they'll most probably still put us in a Zoo anyway. Reason? Well, isn't it obvious? To further protect us, from ourselves.
Yay!
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