Has the fog of war blinded us to the reality of our own extinction? Albert Einstein once said: “I know not with what weapons WW III will be fought, but WW lV will be fought with sticks and stones.” It is time to contemplate on the weapons of WW III. Einstein's question may finally have an answer. Nuclear weapons? Yes! Chemical weapons? Yes! But what will even be more powerful is Artificial Intelligence. In other words man-made robots may well do the job. If robots imitate man's actions, then why should they not fight each other and destroy each other as man does. It is a fact that if a man can do something a machine can do it better. Will robots end up fighting our wars for us? But will we be spared? Robots began replacing human labour long ago, now they are poised to replace human brains. Rice University Computer Science Professor Y Vardi believes that: ”By 2045, artificial intelligence may one day surpass human intelligence.” It has already started. Have you heard of self-driving cars? We can expect pilotless passenger planes within five years! Pilots spend only three minutes of work per flight and with the existing technology they do not even need to do that. Besides 80 per cent of plane crashes are due to human error. Would you travel on a plane with no pilot? In their book: “Race Against the Machine” Erik Brynjolsson and Andrew McAfee of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) discuss the impact of automation. They contend we are approaching a time when the labour market as we know it, will soon cease to exist. Machines are replacing humans faster now than ever before. They have consistently erased some jobs only to replace them with other jobs, but for how long? “While micro-chips are just now beginning to replace human brains, machines have been replacing human brains for years.” We had never heard of ‘robot' till 1920, a word coined by Check playwright Karel Capek, in his play “R.U.R”, (Rossum's Universal Robota), derived from an old Slavic word that meant something akin to ‘monotonous or forced labour'. Although they were soon adopted in car factories they were such a novelty that they appeared on the famous Johnny Carson's ‘Tonight' show in 1966 as an entertaining curiosity. The science of robots however, goes way back for centuries. It was in the ancient Egyptian city of Alexandria that the Greek engineer Heron, (10C – 70D) produced two texts ‘Pneumatica', and ‘Automata', that testify to the existence of hundreds of different kinds of ‘wonder machines'. Al-Jazzar, the Arab polymath, (1136- 1206), also left texts describing and illustrating various mechanical devices—such as an automated waitress that serves drinks, and a musical robot band. Did you know that a robotic musical band tours around the world today and gives sold-out concerts? With such endless capacities and abilities can they be given the responsibility of defending us in a war? Stephen Hawking warns: Robots could eventually engineer themselves, develop their own goals, and surpass human terms of understanding control. In a BBC interview he cautioned: ”The development of full Artificial Intelligence could spell the end of the human race.” An ominous prediction, but Mr Hawking spoke in earnest. Judgement Day may have already started with the numberless use of those attacking vehicles on enemy soil, we call drones. According to a report by the British daily ‘The Guardian', a US military drone that attempted to kill 41 men resulted in the death of 1147 people. Drones save lives, experts say, but the only lives saved here where US lives. The US military flies Global Hawk drones the size of a Boeing 737 passenger jets… and drones flights crash less than piloted flights. In Israel unmanned aerial vehicles seek out and destroy radar installations, risking the machines rather than human lives. But what if the machines turn against us? They have no loyalty built in them. What if they become immune to human control? This is not simply a theory or the product of an over-active imagination. Who could have thought of drones half a century ago? How can we prevent them from becoming brutal- killing machines, out to secure their own interests? These are troubling questions occupying the experts who fear that the next generation of robotic weapons will probably forego human orders and make their own decisions. A robot can take off on its own, redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate humans cannot compete with. It is the ‘Terminator' scenario that was once a screen's science fiction. What is being developed right now by US military scientists is that American soldiers are genetically being modified to perform super-human feats of strength, to run at super-human speeds and even re-grow lost limbs. What have we here --- The remake of Futuristic Movies? There is even a report by the BBC that MIT is developing ‘Ironman', another hit movie. The armour will give US troops super-human strengths. Why is it that we are so unhappy to be human we have to be superhuman? Playing God may be fun, but while we are still human we have a responsibility to know when to draw the line. The fact that we can alter human DNA does not mean we should. Did Einstein ever consider there may not be a WW IV? Once the genie is out… who can put him back in the bottle? “Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow” AESOP (620 – 564 BC)
