• Question: Will robots ever have self-functioning brains and take over the world?

    Asked by mizzlily to Dilwar, Lou, Rachel, Simon, Susan on 16 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Susan Skelton

      Susan Skelton answered on 16 Nov 2013:

      Hi mizzlily! This is a brilliant question!

      I do think it would be theoretically possible, but I believe that it is much less likely to happen than any other possible events that would be fatal to our civilization – like a large asteroid hitting the earth or catastrophic global climate change.

      I believe that it would be possible to make a robot with a brain that is self-functioning, but not very soon! In order to create something like ourselves we have to understand how our brain works in extreme detail so that we could learn how to make something that works in a similar way. At the moment, scientists still have a long way to go to understand exactly what goes on inside our brains.

      There is also an interesting ethical question over whether it is right to make robots which can think for themselves and are not reliant on human instructions.

      There is a big debate underway about whether self-functioning robots should be allowed in the army to make decisions on whether to kill people. When we combine artificial intelligence with independent decision-making in robots it can go out of control and be extremely dangerous.

    • Photo: Simon Langley-Evans

      Simon Langley-Evans answered on 16 Nov 2013:

      That’s a scary thought! I would hope that nobody is ever stupid enough to make a machine that is capable of doing such a thing. The sophisticated machines that we build, with computers to control them always (at the moment) rely on humans to make decisions that are life-or-death matters. If you fly on a plane these days, a computer will do most of the work that a human pilot would normally have done in the past. A computer could even land the plane. If systems are not running normally though the computer will always hand back control to a human. These machines have been designed that way.

      The only way that a machine could do things that harm people would be if it had been programmed that way. Only a fool would do that. Errr… hang on… why is my washing machine pointing a laser at me? Aaargh……

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