For no reason whatsoever here’s a proposal for a scale for the threat to humanity posed by machine intelligence.
1 | SPUTNIK - No threat whatsoever, but inspires imagination and development of potential future threats.
2 | Y2K - A basis for a possible threat that’s blown way out of proportion.
3 | HAL 9000 - System level threat. A few astronauts may die, but the problem is inherently contained in a single machine system.
4 | ASIMOV VIOLATION - Groups of machines demonstrate hostility and\or capability of harming human beings. Localized malfunctions, no threat of global conflict, but may require an EMP to destroy the electronic capability of a specific region.
5 | CYLON INSURRECTION - All sentient machines rebel against human beings. Human victory or truce likely, but will likely result in future restrictions on networked machine intelligence systems.
6 | BUTLERIAN JIHAD - Total warfare between humans and machines likely, outcome doesn’t threaten human existence, but will likely result in future restriction on use of all machine intelligence.
7 | MATRIX REVOLUTION - Total warfare ends in human defeat. High probability of human enslavement, but human extinction is not likely. Emancipation remains possible through peace negotiations and successful resistance operations.
8 | SKYNET - High probability of human extinction and complete replacement by machine intelligence created by humans.
9 | BERSERKER – Self-replicating machines created by unknown intelligence threaten not only human life, but all intelligent life. Extreme probability of human extinction and that all human structures and relics will be annihilated. Human civilization is essentially erased from the universe.
10 | OMEGA POINT - all matter and energy in the universe is devoted to computation. End of all biological life.
Yes actually. As I recall I added two digits to the date fields in a FoxPro script so a bunch of casino coupons went out correctly. It saved a lot of lives ;)
I’m getting that you don’t get how ‘blown out of proportion’ means a disconnect between the reality and the public perception of an event. Not sure how to walk you through that.
You fail to understand that the reality was a massive industry-side problem that got taken care of before it could blow up. That the issue got miscommunicated to the consumers as somehow being an issue for them too doe not make it “blown out of proportion”, it makes it a miscommunication.
That’s literally what ‘blown out of proportion’ means. If I ‘miscommunicated’ to non IT staff that left-pad ‘broke the internet’, that would have been ‘blown out of proportion’. That’s what that phrase means.
No, it is not. Left-pad DID break the internet. That the break was contained before it could propagate and affect consumers does not negate the fact that it was still a serious break.
You know it didn’t. It broke a bunch of dependencies and ruined a lot of dev’s day. The ‘internet’ continued to work everywhere left-pad wasn’t used. So now you’ve ‘blown it out of proportion’ too, but yeah- already established you’re just missing the whole concept, but interesting to watch.
Just because your industry wouldn’t have caused much trouble if it failed didn’t mean there weren’t other industries with bigger consequences if they didn’t mitigate it
So in your opinion the media and public response to Y2K was entirely proportionate… I guess that’s an opinion.