ThAct : Why are We so Scared of Robots/AIs?

This activity is a part of my academic writing...

👉 Films make a Villian out of Technology

Artificial intelligence has been portrayed both as a friend and a foe on the big screen, with its darker side often giving audiences iconic villains.

Artificial intelligence is a popular subject in sci-fi movies, with various films exploring the darker side of the technology. From A Space Odyssey’s HAL 9000 to Terminator 2’s T-1000, there have been several iconic AI villains that have appeared on the big screen.

The best films with AI as villains portray a world where people have taken technology too far and explore the consequences of manmade sentience. Some of these movies take a more nuanced approach to the topic, sometimes portraying the villains as misunderstood victims of humanity’s greed. These highest-rated films on IMDb are often the most groundbreaking, responsible for shaping and redefining multiple movie genres and leaving a lasting impression on viewers around the world.

👉 Why are we so scared of robots or AI's so that we always  imagine them as monsters or Villians?

When people see machines that respond like humans, or computers that perform feats of strategy and cognition mimicking human ingenuity, they sometimes joke about a future in which humanity will need to accept robot overlords.

But buried in the joke is a seed of unease. Science-fiction writing and popular movies, from "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) to "Avengers: Age of Ultron" (2015), have speculated about artificial intelligence (AI) that exceeds the expectations of its creators and escapes their control, eventually outcompeting and enslaving humans or targeting them for extinction.

Conflict between humans and AI is front and center in AMC's sci-fi series "Humans,"which returned for its third season . In the new episodes, conscious synthetic humans face hostile people who treat them with suspicion, fear and hatred. Violence roils as Synths find themselves fighting for not only basic rights but their very survival, against those who view them as less than human and as a dangerous threat. 

Even in the real world, not everyone is ready to welcome AI with open arms. In recent years, as computer scientists have pushed the boundaries of what AI can accomplish, leading figures in technology and science have warned about the looming dangers that artificial intelligence may pose to humanity, even suggesting that AI capabilities could doom the human race.

But why are people so unnerved by the idea of AI?  

Fear and loathing

Negative feelings about AI can generally be divided into two categories: the idea that AI will become conscious and seek to destroy us, and the notion that immoral people will use AI for evil purposes, Kilian Weinberger, an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University, told Live Science.

"One thing that people are afraid of, is that if super-intelligent AI more intelligent than us becomes conscious, it could treat us like lower beings, like we treat monkeys," he said. "That would certainly be undesirable."

👉 Interpretations fron above points

However, fears that AI will develop awareness and overthrow humanity are grounded in misconceptions of what AI is, Weinberger noted. AI operates under very specific limitations defined by the algorithms that dictate its behavior. Some types of problems map well to AI's skill sets, making certain tasks relatively easy for AI to complete. "But most things do not map to that, and they're not applicable," he said.

This means that, while AI might be capable of impressive feats within carefully delineated boundaries playing a master-level chess game or rapidly identifying objects in images, for example  that's where its abilities end.

Thank you...