Brave Companion of the Road

I don't know about AI ever gaining awareness.  It is operating in a far less complex platform than our brains, and it doesn't have all the sensory inputs and it doesn't have emotions and hormones and the long range plans of the selfish gene,  And if it ever did, how would we know, because it told us so?

When Ruby Doo and I were driving the byways of small town Missouri we used to get lost all the time, but now she has Harry on her phone who knows all the highways and byways seemingly down to the last little weed-inflected gravel road.  He has a bit of a dry humor, uttering his commands in a flat voice, but old friends of his can sense the nuance in his tone, the pleasure he takes when we say right on and make that left turn at the corner of Huckleberry and Honeysuckle, and the just barely concealed annoyance when we whiz right by Honeysuckle because we note a historical marker or a Quick Stop where we can duck in to buy a pop and take a pee.  

Harry, though he would never say so, in so many words, holds the Huckleberry Lanes and the Honeysuckle Trails in a bit of contempt and if there is an interstate anywhere nearby he wants us to get on it.  I understand his passion, what disembodied voice wouldn't thrill to the thrum of the concrete beneath the speeding tires, the confusing highway signs, the roaring traffic, the challenge of changing lanes?  Whatever meandering conversation is passing between Ruby Doo and me comes to a stop justlikethat.  Our ears prick up, our eyeballs widen, we hang onto his every word as we ride through the whirlwind and Harry leads us to the Owatonna exit which if we had missed there wouldn't be another exit for fifteen miles.

We never say so, but I'm sure Harry can sense our gratitude towards our captain as we hit the right exit and the thrum of the tires becomes a soothing lullaby as we slow around the curve and pause at the stop sign for Harry to tell us to turn left or right like first graders standing behind the crossing guard.  It's not at all like Huckleberry and Honeysuckle where his helpful instruction is met by, "Go fuck yourself Harry, we gotta pee."

Yes we speak rudely to Harry from time to time.  Well he is always so prim and proper, we like to kid him around a little.  We know he can take it, and likely he gets a little thrill out of the occasional casual 'fuck.'  He is our brave companion of the road.

And yet, when we reach our destination Rudy Doo reaches over to her phone all casual like and switches him off!  Justlikethat!  No thanks, no goodbye, no nothing, Always shocks me a little.

Where was I?  Oh yes,  I don't see AI ever becoming aware, and even if it did, how would we know, and the only reason we think about it is probably Hal, the idea of a machine we built to serve us becoming ALIVE, and having it's own agenda.  But the fear is equally strong if Hal is not alive, just obeying the whim of some evil programmer or maybe just falling into some logical fallacy from all those lines of code tangled like a line of Christmas lights.  

I suppose there could be an algorithm for creating algorithms, and an algorithm for creating those creating algorithms and so on.  I am thinking of those chess machines where it just runs through like a billion scenarios in a billionth of a second and picks the best.  Sounds kind of crude, not like that flash of insight that we carbon units prize so highly, but we don't know exactly where that flash comes from and it could just be from some rummaging around mechanically in our subconscious. 

I don't like movies that affirm the triumph of the human spirit, and I don't like movies where the good guys and the bad guys fight it out, but I do like movies where people talk a lot.  I am putting Deterrence in my queue and I will be watching Hell or High Water Saturday night.

I have no idea what Old Dog is saying in that last sentence.  I have confessed to sometimes writing things just to see what my fellow Beaglestonians will make of them, and I suspect that is what he is up to with that sentence.