In a recent Reddit AMA session, Dr. Michio Kaku – a renowned physicist – suggested that we develop robot brain implants in order to keep them from murdering humans.
Kaku warned of the threat of robots developing advanced intelligence, stating that they could get smart enough before the end of the century to gain the sentience to start murdering humans. He believes we should develop robot brain implants in order to make sure these artificial intelligences don’t turn on us and cause some major problems.
While Dr. Kaku believes that robots currently have the “intelligence of a bug” and lack the capability to do menial tasks like picking up garbage, he believes that robot brain implants may help us out as these artificial intelligences see exponential growth. While the robots may currently only have a bug’s intelligence, these advanced technologies are capable of learning and growing. As our own research advances and we create more capable helpers, there’s always the risk that our own creations could turn dangerous and start murdering humans.
While robots are currently barely capable of moving on their own, Kaku believes the robots will start to develop better locomotion capabilities as well, developing the capabilities of “a mouse, then a rat, then a cat, dog, and monkey.” With how similar a monkey is to humans in terms of motor skills, the extrapolated growth could certainly necessitate a brain implant to keep these robots from using their enhanced capabilities for murdering humans.
We may have the best of intentions with developing new intelligences to help us out, but there’s always a danger in creating a machine with the capability to learn and grow. Just as humanity has evolved from primitive beginnings, robots will likely do the same. The main difference is that while it took humans hundreds of thousands of years to build a modern society, robots will develop exponentially faster. Their enhanced capabilities with this huge growth may soon see their intelligence surpass our own, and if we’re to avoid a future where these new intelligences are murdering humans, Dr. Kaku may be correct in warning of the need for robot brain implants.
Dr Kaku agrees with Elon Musk – another major voice in the technology sector – that we should avoid developing robots too far until we have the capability to enhance our abilities ourselves. Kaku believes that as robots continue to advance, we’ll have to turn to modifying ourselves in order to keep up.
“This may sound strange to some people, but remember that this is the people of the far future who will decide how far they want to modify themselves to deal with super smart robot…We’re not going to look like some freaky robot because we’re genetically hardwired to look good to the opposite sex, to look good to our peers.”
“Hundreds of thousands of years ago, and hundreds of thousands of years into the future, we’ll still look the same.”
In order to protect ourselves from the potential of these new intelligences outpacing our own and starting murdering humans, we need to take steps in order to address the problem. Implementing robot brain implants may be just what we need to stay on top – provided these robots don’t get so intelligent that they find a way to disable it, of course.
Moving forward, there are going to be some real safety concerns when it comes to continuing our path forward towards advanced technologies. Humans may be too smart for their own good, and moving too quickly to develop an intelligent being capable of thought that surpasses our own may cause more harm than it does add value to our society.
