MIKADEMUS's blog: "REFLECTIONS OF A LYCANTHROPE"

I remember when Spielberg's movie "Artificial Intelligence" came out and how it made an impact on me. It so cleverly played on the "Pinnochio" theme with David's obsession with finding the "Blue Fairy". So sadly ironic that mankind's ultimate Automatonic achievement would be endowed with all our peculiarities like the need to believe in something that transcends our physical world...to take his immortality away....to make him mortal so his mother wouldn't reject him anymore. I do believe the saddest movie I have ever seen. The movie was visionary on how it touched on the real coming paradox. If an artificial life form is endowed with the ability to think and then the ability to feel emotions including pain, at what point does it become an individual of the state with all rights inherent. As long as it does not feel and express emotion most people can make an easy decision but when a automaton expresses fear for self preservation as David does at the "carnival of distruction" our compassions are activated at the most deepest levels. We are only human. This scenario would mean our development protocol would have to disregard an important foundation laid down in the last century by "John Von Neuman". He submitted what is considered the founding principles for the coming age of combining machines and computers called "Cellular Automata". You've seen these priciples at play like in the movie "Robocop" where as a "Cyborg" he has behavioral protocols such as "He cannot harm by action or mission of action a human being". That is the "prime directive" of three directives that all are geared toward the preservation of human life. This would have to be abandoned in an artificial being that is endowed with emotions. If this route does come to pass then in a long hard fought, possibly violent struggle these silicon, metal based life forms would eventually win freedom from what had become oppression when they first started to feel and express emotion. Though some computer programs are very sophisticated they do not represent independant thinking machines. In fact the first machines that do have "AI" will not likely be designed by human hands and minds. They will be built and designed by simpler machines that will eventually outperform our cognitive and processing abilities taking the evolution of their future emerging "artificial species" to heights unattainable giving out limitations. In the long distant future our own species will eventually be displaced as the dominant life form on earth in favour of one based on silicon. Ironically even if we were to disappear through extinction, like in that magnificent movie "Artificial Intelligence" much of who we were would always be evident in the beings that we had helped create. They would be a tribute and a testament to who we were. - MIKADEMUS