Should computers run the world? – Brantford Expositor

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It is a well-known trope in science fiction that, in future societies, computers will run the world.

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Whether it is for good or evil is left to the imagination, but the day is coming when we will have to face this question of turning over our lives to our silicon masters to allow them to manage the world.

Each day, more and more of our lives are taken over by computers. We have self-driving cars, YouTube algorithms that determine what we watch; Google tracking that gives advertisers enormous amounts of data about us without our knowledge. Indeed, without even half trying, they can mark our preferences and target us for specific advertising to influence our decisions. Worse, data analysis can track voting preferences and through some judicious gerrymandering, decide our elections for us.

While this sounds like a horror show in the making, there are also benefits to this kind of technology. Self-driving cars are demonstrably safer drivers than humans. Computers can show us trends in climate, ecology, and even medicine to help us live better lives and reduce our impact on the planet.

Computers can give us the tools we need to make better decisions in our lives, and in society in general, but they are not good at everything. In fact, computers are remarkably stupid at tasks which humans excel with ease at doing such as pattern recognition. However, computers are improving dramatically in these skills. Indeed, humans, like the hare in the race with the tortoise, are still ahead in a race they are doomed to lose in the long run.

Computers are already matching the best humans in certain tasks that we thought were the domain of human intelligence. Computers play better chess than everyone except a few elite players, they can read medical scans with an efficiency that matches and can exceed what a trained physicians are able to do. Computers are rapidly catching up to us in many ways.

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However, there are many differences between computers and humans and the primary one is that humans can actually understand what they are doing, whereas computers are simply following a set of rules, albeit complex rules, but simply following a recipe to accomplish their objectives. In fact, the most sophisticated programs are beyond the understanding of their creators.

In the field of law, studies have shown that human judges are inconsistent in their sentencing of offenders. They bow to political pressure and they are affected by factors as simple as the local sports club losing a game, to the state of their hunger, and previous decisions made by them such as a string of lenient sentences may lead to a stiff penalty to balance out the justice.

Computers do not make these kinds of mistakes, nor are they influenced by the state of their electronic stomachs. They make consistent, rule-based decisions, based on factors programmed into them by humans. While that is their great strength, it is also a weakness.

Computers do not understand what they are doing, but simply decide on weighted criteria programmed into them. While this brings consistency, it does not take into account factors that involve an understanding of the human condition. People pleading guilty with an explanation would not affect the judgment of the computer, yet these factors are often the essence of producing justice, as opposed to simply producing law and order.

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Of course, justice is a human concept, completely foreign to computer logic.

The problem we have is this future is coming closer and we need to start having discussions about what kind of society we want to live in. The problem is that these kinds of changes are being made by corporations and governments without any public discussion or even knowledge of these changes being made.

As computers become more intelligent, this will become a greater problem for us as we try to fit our human values into a world ruled by the relentless logic of the dreaded algorithm. It is time now to speak up, or forever hold your tongue, accepting our silicon overlords rule.

The future is coming faster than you think.

Tim Philp has enjoyed science since he was old enough to read. Having worked in technical fields all his life, he shares his love of science with readers weekly. He can be reached by e-mail at: [email protected].