Don't anthropomorphize AI's

(they hate that)

2 minute read

AI does not equal robots

Have you noticed how many movies and shows equate AI with robot bodies? And typically, though not always, they are anthropomorphic and self-contained bodies.

Blade Runner, Ex Machina, Terminator series*though notably that had all variations - kudos! , Chappie, and so many others all featured individual robots you could identify with. Understandable, but, I think, misleading vs. what our experiences with AI are likely to be. The portrayal of Her’s Samantha probably got it more correct, or alternately Skynet or HAL. That’s not to say that any of these movies aren’t good - they can rise or fall on their own merits independent of this issue. I certainly like many of them!

But I think an Ava type situation in Ex Machina, for example, is far past when we would have first encountered the most important issues with AI. This relates to the how it starts topic, but basically, unless it turns out that you need a human like body of sensory inputs in order to have a human like*(or let's just say recognizable/relatable to humans) intelligence, it is just far, far more likely that the first roughly human scale AI (not to mention ASIs) will be a disembodied entity created across server farms. From a processing and resource perspective, that seems like the only thing that makes sense to me. Whatever you could do in a body, you could do first without the constraints of a body.

That’s not to say it won’t have senses - I think it must. But I don’t see why sensory channels, or even a full body (connected remotely rather than housing the mind), couldn’t be part of a “cloud”/farm, etc. based AI.

I do think those senses will include (but not be limited to) sight and sound, especially if it is a general intelligence rather than a specific purpose oriented.*which would, I think, likely be made from the start to sense things outside the human norm, like extended spectra, particle counts, packet stats, route health, multitudes of various sensors, etc.

I think it will have to be able to process sight/sound stimuli in order to develop the necessary connections to understand and relate to us and our world. Of course, that may not be the goal, and it certainly isn’t likely to be limited (at least for long) to those sensory channels.

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