The IBM supercomputer Watson recently attracted considerable media attention after defeating champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in a Jeopardy! tournament. Jennings humorously recounts his experience in the exhibition match for Slate, in an article titled “My Puny Human Brain.”
In his written response to the final question, Ken Jennings conceded defeat: “I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords.” Consequently, this victory of a computer system over two human contestants has sparked conversation about artificial intelligence and human obsolescence.
Luddite doomsayers have half-jokingly indicated that it is only a matter of time before the machines become self-aware and rise up to annihilate us (à la Skynet in the Terminator series), enslave us (à la V.I.K.I. in the film I, Robot) or use our bodies for bioelectricity (à la The Matrix).
Ben Zimmer, writing for The Atlantic, debunks these hyperbolic assertions in “Is It Time to Welcome Our New Computer Overlords?” The Jeopardy! exhibition match has exploited the “man vs. machine” trope – calling to mind the chess games between Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue, or the folk tale of John Henry and the steam-powered hammer. As Zimmer observes, this approach has been an effective marketing strategy: “It certainly makes for a better storyline than, say, ‘Check out the latest incremental innovations that Natural Language Processing researchers are making in the field of question-answering!’” Ultimately, Zimmer concludes that humans have little to worry about:
We're still dealing with the limited task of question-answering, not anything even vaguely approaching full-fledged comprehension of natural language, with all of its “nuance, slang and metaphor.” If Watson had chuckled at that “computer overlords” jab, then I'd be a little worried.
While we may have little to fear from a robotic uprising, John Markoff, writing for The New York Times in “A Fight to Win the Future: Computers vs. Humans,” predicts far-reaching social and economic change as a result of Watson’s victory. He observes,
I.B.M.’s executives have said they intend to commercialize Watson to provide a new class of question-answering systems in business, education and medicine. The repercussions of such technology are unknown, but it is possible, for example, to envision systems that replace not only human experts, but hundreds of thousands of well-paying jobs throughout the economy and around the globe. Virtually any job that now involves answering questions and conducting commercial transactions by telephone will soon be at risk. It is only necessary to consider how quickly A.T.M.’s displaced human bank tellers to have an idea of what could happen.
Referring to statements made by Pattie Maes, a computer scientist at M.I.T., Markoff contends, “Not only do designers face ethical issues… but increasingly as skills that were once exclusively human are simulated by machines, their designers are faced with the challenge of rethinking what it means to be human.”
I am troubled by this statement. The development of new technologies may certainly make some jobs obsolete and lead to economic change, but it is a mistake to suggest that this obvious reality requires “rethinking what it means to be human.” Perhaps Markoff or Maes has a utilitarian worldview, one which assigns value and dignity to the human person based on his contribution to the economy – in other words, each of us is merely a cog in the works of a great social machine. If one’s definition of “what it means to be human” is so pitifully limited, then it definitely merits reconsideration.
Human beings are relational, not merely transactional. To fully understand what it means to be human, one must appreciate that human beings are creatures, made in the image and likeness of a Creator. This revelation is the basis of human dignity.
While computers may be able to simulate the skills of people with dazzling efficiency – to wit, consider the calculator – they will never be able to replace human beings. They may displace people from certain jobs or transactional roles, but they can never replace them. As the confused understanding of human nature articulated by Markoff attests, we don’t know or understand enough about ourselves to be able to engineer a suitable replacement.
-- Michael Brewer
Comments