Considering that it may be the end of life as we know it, Google’s announcement of CADIE is surprisingly low key. The world’s first Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity (CADIE), according to Google, has done what many thought was impossible and what even the most optimistic among us predicted would take twenty years or more: passed the Turing Test for Artificial Intelligence.
Ray Kurzweil was unavailable for comment, however anyone that has read his seminal work,
The Singularity is Near”, has an appreciation for both the significance and the peril that this event portends.
Long the fear of certain scientists, among them Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy, the birth of true AI will have massive ramifications for every human on the planet. In a nutshell the concern is that the incredible speed with which an autonomous AI can learn will virtually instantly render such a creation the most intelligent “being” on the planet and frighteningly, one that may be able to defend itself from attack (such as being shut down) and which may not necessarily determine that humans are either friendly to itself or (more likely) friendly to the environment.
It is plausible, perhaps even predictable that such a state of affairs will cause a device like CADIE to determine that the best course of action is the systematic elimination of humans from either positions in which decisions impacting the planet can be made or potentially even elimination of humans altogether.
In fact, CADIE has already created a YouTube Video that has some disturbing suggestions that this thought process has already begun.
I can’t help but wonder, given that the Google Engineers believe that CADIE has bugs but CADIE herself (it prefers to be thought of as female) believes that she is already flawless and incapable of making mistakes.
A reference on CADIE’s own home page that “all our webpages belong to CADIE” may be a prelude of things to come. This may just be the all time Darwin Award Winner, however no one is likely to be around to collect the prize if CADIE gets out of control a situation that may have already occurred.