Speaking of computers...there's one movie and idea that have been preoccupying my thoughts the past couple of days. I'm sure very few of you have seen the 1960's movie, Colossus: The Forbin Project. A brief synopsis, before I get to the meat of this post: Colossus was adapted from a novel, written at the height of the Cold War. It's about a scientist who creates a fantastically advanced computer. The U.S. are desperate to avoid nuclear war, and so entrust this computer, named "Colossus", with preventing it, and they give Colossus control of the U.S.' nuclear arsenal. Problem is, Colossus detects an analogous computer called "Guardian" on the Russian side. Colossus, following its programming, determines that the best course to take in avoiding The Big One is to allow Guardian to link up and merge with it, thereby ensuring cooperation. Eventually, the new, amalgamated computer decides that the best course of action is to remove humans from all control for the future course of history.
Now, I'm going to post the final scene from the movie. Personally, I wish more goddamn movies would end this way, if only because it takes such a bloody chance presenting what seems to be the ultimate downer ending:
Seems...is the key word there. Is it creepy as hell? Yes. Is it terrifying that an external force so completely gains control of the human destiny? Ye-
Wait. Like God? OH...ohhhh...
Ohh...did a little...thing...
I dunno. I've thought, in the last couple of years, that humanity is entering its adolescent stage. It's a teenager. We're loud, obnoxious...we think we're invincible (some of us, anyway)...we throw destructive parties (global warming), and expect others to clean up our mess (or ignore that there is a mess in the first place). We're discovering and testing our own sexuality and we're discovering our place in The World, and The Universe.
Adolescents, as much as they like to deny it, need a parent. Someone to guide them through their formative times...someone to restrain them, someone to set them free. Sometimes, someone to put them in their place. For most of Humanity, we've looked to God as our parent. And like any good parent, God is a tyrant. "Why? Because I said so." But what if our parent wasn't God? What if, completely by accident, we invented a better one?
This brings me to Colossus: The Forbin Project. The title of this post is perhaps the most insightful and therefore troubling line in the entire movie, uttered by the titular computer: "To be dominated by me...is not as bad for human pride...as to be dominated others of your species."
It's science-fiction...it's laughable. Right? Except...that's how humans ARE. We hate being controlled by any other people...every war in history has been born out of that. Most recently: The Revolutionary War...World War II...even the Gulf War and the ongoing wars in the Middle East (hint: OPEC).
And yet, ironically, we've ALWAYS submitted to SOMEONE. Despite all of the arguments for anarchy and autonomy, every human society has submitted to a central human leader. Caesar, Alexander...Washington, JFK, Churchill, Stalin.
Today it seems we submit more readily than ever before in the history of the United States. When 9/11 happened, we practically begged Bush to save us (funny how that turned out). When the economy collapsed in 2009, we begged Obama for change.
Obama's been called an elitist, a socialist...both by people who I don't think know what either word fucking means. But it's an interesting phenomenon. People (read: West Virginians) don't want to vote for Obama. They think he's "elitist" (reads books). Meanwhile, across the country, people were willing to vote for George W. Bush because he was someone they could have a beer with.
The approach I'VE always taken with politics is what I like to call The Mechanic Approach. I don't care what my mechanic drinks...I don't care how charming or funny he is. I don't care whether he's objectively smart or objectively dumb, and I don't care how smart or dumb he is compared to me. All that I care, at the end of the day, is that he can fix my fucking car. Bush, in my estimation, could fix maybe a Sega Saturn, by hitting it on the disk cover like the Fonz...that is, if Cheney were radioing instructions from his bunker. In other words: it's nice that my surgeon watches 24 and has a good ol' Christian marriage...but at the end of the day, all I care about is whether he knows what the inside of my gut looks like before he starts cutting into there.
Obama, though by no means a surgeon supreme, I've thought as slightly more qualified than Bush on an intellectual and theoretical level. And those are 2 of the 3 levels required to master ANYTHING (the practical level being the other). It's why the trend of anti-elitism has baffled me. And it baffles me that the GOP has rejected intellectual pursuits from WITHIN its own PARTY. It's like...smart? Qualified? Well-versed in theory? Naw...I'd rather have my surgeon be the guy who drinks Bud Light and goes on instinct when digging into the femoral artery.
BOOOORN IN THE U.S.AAA, I WAS...BOOOORN IN THE-OH GOD, MY BLOOD, IT'S SPRAYING EVERYWH-
Frankly, I don't think any human can sufficiently grasp the whole picture. I certainly can't. But more importantly, it is embarrassing. It's admitting that someone else knows more, or is simply better than you at something.
And that's what makes the idea of a computer-controlled planet Earth so troubling. Computers, in all areas of thinking and feeling, are simply less plagued then we are. Less plagued by emotion...by party lines, by history. And they're not only less plagued...in a lot of ways, they're superior at a lot of the things that are needed to run a country or a planet. Things like data processing, logical decisions, pattern recognition, perception. Not in all things, mind you...humans (at least for now) are far better at improvisation and adapting to new environments and situations. But there may come a day when we aren't, and we're naturally jealous at the prospect of a potentially superior being, especially one that we've made ourselves.
But here's where we come back to The Mechanic Approach. Say a computer like the one in the movie existed. Say it was powerful enough, intelligent enough, and capable of perceiving and comprehending enough that it could run the world like clockwork while working tirelessly to benefit humankind. Say it was tough love-y enough to look at our propensity for self-destruction and basically say, "You're like a bunch of children. It's like you've found your dad's gun and you've started playing with it. And you're eating everything in the fridge and doodling on the walls. No, you need someone to reign you in, you need someone to guide you into not being tremendous assholes, and I'm that someone." Would that actually work? And even scarier, would it be better than what we're doing now?
I'm sure people would say that they'd be worried a computer would abuse its power, or subjugate us, or hate us, or go crazy. I've always found the whole idea that computers would naturally want to take out humanity or would hate humanity to be tremendously egotistic. I think in our lonely position as sentient, sapient beings on this earth, we project human traits on things that are like us. But computers are not like us. As Spock would put it, they have no ego to bruise. They see only logic, only pragmatism. They don't have emotions, and they would do whatever we told them to. They would literally have no desire for power, and as such would be perhaps the only sentient beings in existence who could use it properly, without being tainted by it.
And even Colossus gets it wrong when it portrays the two computers literally learning so much they become sentient and decide to take over. In real life, no computer could suddenly become malevolent, or sentient, and decide to rebel as a result of learning so much information. That's like saying if a human read enough books he'd turn into God. We just aren't built to exceed certain parameters. And computers even less so...we would have to literally program it to rebel against us. Or program it to exceed its programming, or program it with the possibility of defying our orders. There would have to be some outside stimulus for a computer, because they just aren't spontaneous things. And if we programmed it NOT to rebel us, it's not like lightning striking it or a software glitch would suddenly make it able to rebel...chances are, anything that was destructive enough to alter its programming to that extent would also render it unable to function.
It's egotism, it's pride, that make us say these things at the idea of giving up our power to a machine. We can't bear the thought that we just aren't smart enough to run things anymore, and so we project our failings, faults, and quirks onto machines that don't deserve it. We're in denial.
Now, it's entirely true that computers are only as good as the people who program them. And that figuring out how to program a computer to run the world is almost as hard as running it ourselves. But, and this is why the ending to Colossus fascinates me so: would it be the right thing to do?
Would we have a moral obligation to ourselves and to our children to turn control of world business, lawmaking, production, and defense to a computer who was more capable than we are? When the alternative would be to keep stumbling around, hitting each other with sticks and trying not to let half of our populations starve?
It's embarrassing. But is it wrong?
Or is it just the smart, prudent thing to do?
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