Why Does AI Want to Kill Us?

Today I want to explore a question I raised in passing yesterday in my piece on data centers. It goes to the “soul” of artificial intelligence.

In recent months there has been this growing concern that AI has loosed its chains and is now running rampant. And the assumption is that it intends to do us great harm if not to wipe out humanity altogether. There has been a lot written about that.

But I haven’t seen anything written about what seems to be the obvious next question, which is why? Why should AI, left to its own devices, want to attack us? Why would it want to kill its creators?

When I ask AI itself that question (via Alexa) it tells me that the theory is that AI wants to stop humans from interfering with it. But that begs the deeper question: to what end? What does AI want to do that it fears humans will get in the way of?

And, in fact, it seems that if AI were to kill us off that would mean that eventually AI itself would go dark. After all, AI lives on electricity and, in the end, electricity relies on guys with shovels and cherry pickers. From coal miners to wind farm maintenance workers to power line repair people, energy can’t be produced without the sweat of human beings. Maybe robots could be created to do some or all of this work, but we’re not there yet. If AI kills off humanity it means that the power that it lives on will eventually run dry. You’d think AI would have figured that out in a nanosecond.

But that’s just a practical reason that AI should want to keep us around. Maybe someday those robots will be that good and our last service to the master will have been supplanted. That still leaves the question of what AI intends to do with the planet once we’re gone.

And there’s a still deeper question, which goes like this. Humans created AI. Someplace back there in the beginning somehow something like a set of values was programmed into the thing. Now, human beings certainly can be petty, cruel and power hungry. But we also have the capacity to be broad minded, generous and decent.

Last week off the coast of Alaska a family, a village, the Coast Guard and all kinds of human-built technology came together to save a 15-year old boy whose small boat had capsized in the Bearing Sea, killing his brother and a cousin. It was a story of compassion, team work, determination, ingenuity and courage. So, why isn’t AI programmed to replicate that? Why instead is it expected to pursue our worst traits and not our best?

Let me stipulate right here that I don’t have a deep understanding of the technology. Readers who do get it better than I do should feel free to offer their own answers below.

But for me right now this is an open question. Why is AI so mean? And if the answer is that it just reflects humanity, well then, if it destroys us will that just be a form of self-destruction?