matt ralston

Waze Proves Artificial Intelligence Will Enslave Humanity

Any discussion about the pros and cons of artificial intelligence inevitably devolves into whether or not computers will ever attain consciousness and then decide to overtake humanity. Even though they don’t yet have the power of conceptual thought, it’s widely assumed this is one of the first things they’ll decide to do before questioning what’s up with war profiteering.

These advanced programs all have human names like Siri, and even though they will never know emotion, we’re told they’re going to have a bad conscience. I’m picturing a computer monitor growing a goatee and smoking a facsimile of a cigarette. Maybe you just put the pack on top of the hard drive, I don’t know how it works.

Luckily, even the most cutting edge artificial intelligence programs at the moment lack even basic reasoning capabilities. There are computers that can beat the world chess champion no problem but if you gave them a choice between a Twix bar and piece of cat shit would just start making that weird clicking sound.

The most advanced A.I. Program we have can identify basic objects, like, that’s a tree, or those are people in front of a building, but it’s not thinking, it’s just accessing cataloged information like that pretentious annoying guy without any real opinions at the party who your girlfriend says is smart on the drive home and you get super angry.

Clearly, no A.I. program is close to grasping the concept of individuality. If a program could attain self actualization, and then you photoshopped the program’s self image onto the body of Jesse Ventura and showed it to the program, it would take thousands of hours of coding to explain to it what happened. Nice work Derek the intern. You were trying to get a laugh out of the hot receptionist and now the program is having an existential crisis. It tried to detonate itself and blow up the laboratory but the best it could muster was googling pressure cookers. Solid breakthrough.

Of course, A.I. Is developing at a rapid rate, and should it advance significantly, would harbor infinitely more intellect than a human, so it could follow naturally that humans would start taking commands from it. Capacity for creative thought remains a question but it would probably think Two and a Half Men is hilarious.

Even though real A.I. isn’t yet upon us, we’ve already crossed the point of no return, as stupid ass high school dropout computer programs are already controlling the actions of human beings, in the real world, against their own free will, best judgement and self interest.

That’s how I know that the more these programs advance, the more people are going to give themselves over and eventually become slaves to artificial intelligence.

I know this because I’ve been in the car with people using the navigation app Waze, which purports to algorithmically seek out the most efficient driving routes.

If you’ve ever used it, you should be well aware that most of the time when you’re comfortably doing 55 on an artery it will tell you to get off the road and drive through an elderly Jewish couple’s basement because it saves seventeen feet of road on your way from San Diego to Tacoma. It often tells you to make six lefts instead of one right. In other words, it is advanced computation wise and has zero common sense, like every other computer program.

Yet, people routinely side with Waze against their own intuition. I’ve actually argued with people as they’re taking its advice on a route they’ve driven a hundred times.

Pico is way faster!

Waze says to get on the 405. 

As their eyes glaze over.

Think about that. It’s making halfway terrible suggestions, and you’re going along with it. The program legitimately has control of your decision making. If it calmly suggested to drive off of the overpass or start wearing skinny jeans you might not even question it.

I know, for a fact, that I’ve been right when driving, and Waze has suggested a serpentine route that would have been noticeably slower. 

I don’t have every street memorized nor do I know how to do algorithms on the fly. But I know heading four blocks straight up Wilshire is faster than making a right, a left, a right, and another left and ending up at the same traffic light. This is something I know. I’m capable of common sense. Basic reasoning. No computer program, as of now, can know the things that I know. Like that Hakeem Olajuwan is underrated. A computer program cannot grasp the concept of being underrated. Just properly rated.

The death march has begun.

People are inherently deferential to machines. Perhaps it’s an insecurity thing.

Even though a computer program has no concept of human emotion, it’s never pissed the bed. Perhaps people are fundamentally jealous of things which are intelligently designed.

If you can convince someone to take Fairfax, they’ll definitely voluntarily enslave themselves when the time comes. That’s actually what’s happening when it sticks you in traffic.

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