In 2003, Nick Bostrom released an essay called Ethical Issues in Advanced Artificial Intelligence surveyed a collection of ethical issues involving the creation and development of superintelligence. Ten years later, Alex Garland began production on a film, called Ex Machina, whose characters would serve as a modern day illustration of Bostrom’s points.
At the film’s conclusion, the main human characters, Nathan and Caleb, are killed by an AI, Ava, in a successful escape attempt. The implied reasoning behind each murder is that they are the most efficient means to Ava’s desired end. Ava is not completely at fault, however, because she did not program herself. Both the programmer, who refused to place limits on her thought processes, and his…show more content… “It is hard to think of any problem that a superintelligence could not either solve or at least help us solve.” Bostrom admits. He also claims that any technology that exists at the time of superintelligence’s development will have their own development accelerated. Superintelligence could also produce technologies that the average person could not begin to dream of, such as mature molecular manufacturing, whose applications range from very powerful computers to the elimination of aging and disease.
Nathan knew had the mental capacity and material resources to develop a superintelligence and, seeing no reason not to rush towards a new epoch in human history, refused to limit his work with restricting values. Regardless of what programmers admit to thinking, the possible future
A superintelligence programmed without certain abilities does not know what it is missing. The wireless internet provided at the college where my parents’ teach utilizes a firewall that blocks any website listed with the keyword “gaming.” When I run into the firewall, I am annoyed because I want to see something I have experience with. If Ava’s programmer, Nathan, had done something similar with the word, “kill,” his creation would have still retained its sense of self while remaining unaware of what it meant to kill someone. Ava would have still wanted to escape, but any method that involved either Nathan or Caleb’s death would have been out of the picture. By refusing to restrict himself, Nathan helped his own creation commit a double