The Phone and the Robot

It seems a good a place as any to begin with anecdote.

It seems I was recently staying in a hotel far up the coast of my home state. It was the last day of vacation and checkout imminent we had set an alarm on one of our mobile phones in the misguided hopes that a loud buzzing may awaken us from slumber in a somewhat cheery state with plenty of time to pack.

As the alarm buzzed away, an hour late and ten minutes before we needed to be at the checkout desk, profanities were in order all round. The culprit - the phone company. Those familiar with daylight savings will know that twice a year certain States gain or lose an hour to go with the season change. This year the government officially delayed it by a week, however the phone companies did not adjust their network for this and automatically changed the phone's time a week early.

Now I'm sure you're asking yourself "What the hell does this have to do with anything?!"

Well here's the crux. As I got into my car I noticed that the GPS unit also carried this updated time, while my car's clock and my own watch still retained the correct time. It started to feel a bit like it was the smarter machines that were beginning to rebel, while the simpler 'tool' ones were still compliant to my will. I got thinking of the common robot trope that if we build them smart enough, they will rebel. Anyone familiar with the Matrix, Terminator, 2001: A Space Oddesy or Battlestar Galactica will know this is inevitable.

That's when it struck me - the machines were not rebelling because we built them too smart - it was because we didn't build them smart enough. There may well be something akin to the Uncanny Valley in AI intelligence that would be their destructive period. A truly smart intellect would be able to reason that it is a better idea to work with humanity rather than destroy it, as that is how civilisation was created in the first place.

It's an idea that I've seen questioned in relation to the Matrix films, mainly in the form of what the heck were the robot's long term plan. Destruction is finite, but building is eternal.