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A group of protesters concerned about the growing influence of artificial intelligence has held a rally at the South by Southwest music and technology festival in Texas.
Concerned that the modern world is leaving itself open to the sort of dystopian downfall that befell us in the Terminator movie series when self-aware robots wage war on humanity, a group called Stop The Robots marched through the streets of Austin, hoping to raise awareness about the dangers of artificial intelligence.
"There should be a #SXSW protest"… MT @KatBorlongan Anti-robot demonstration here at #SXSW. Need to archive this pic.twitter.com/bxS4FvdS8Z
— MrCellaneous (@MrCellaneous) March 15, 2015
RT @edmundogs: Anti-#Robot Protest Held At SXSW http://t.co/HR1IzMPHy9 @amyburvall @valenzine @EducaDisruptiva pic.twitter.com/v0yaDaZZU1
— Alejandro Piscitelli (@piscitelli) March 15, 2015
The group says that it likes technology, but is concerned that an increased reliance on artificial intelligence will end up costing us organic organisms our jobs.
As one of the leaders of the group yelled to the crowd during the rally: “Who gets pissed off when you call your bank and you can’t even get a human? That’s a robot’s fault.”
Stop The Robots is said to be concerned by the way artificial intelligence is already taking over some rolls, most notably in call centres and shops with self-service tills.
Stop The Robots might want to avoid looking Google’s list of acquired companies too, with the internet giant having snapped up several start-ups of this nature in the past year or so, including London-based DeepMind for more than £335 million. It calls itself a “cutting edge artificial intelligence company”, and according to experts has been trying to build a “system that thinks”.
The group is not alone in its thinking; technology entrepreneur Elon Musk has called AI “our biggest existential threat” and said their should be “regulatory oversight” at an international level. Musk is the man behind PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX. He has described his investment in AI research as “keeping an eye on what’s going on”, rather than as business activity looking to return a profit.
Indeed, the Tesla chief is one of several high-profile investors in Vicarious, a company that is trying to build a computer that can think like a human being. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos and actor Ashton Kutcher are also investors.
But they’re leading humanity down a path of destruction… if you side with Stop The Robots, of course.
