Putney Author Sounds the Alarm on Artificial Intelligence
Mike Harrison's new book Cloning Cain contains a stark warning
Mike Harrison
June 11, 2024
Having previously dealt with the murky world of cryogenics in his last novel, Putney author Mike Harrison has taken Artificial Intelligence as the subject matter of his latest book.
In recently published Cloning Cain, he lays out just how easy it would be for this rapidly developing technology to subdue and eliminate the human race.
In a near future world, he looks at how the security services have already recognised the dangers and are working with the global tech giants. He believes that in the real-world, contingencies are already being put in place by such an alliance.
He says, “My story is fiction, of course, but in setting out the real threats that AI poses, our vulnerability to AI’s knowledge of our weaknesses and the ever-expanding alliance between big tech and the security establishment, I am highlighting things which I believe we should all be thinking about.
“Big Tech and the security complex may well be our best line of defence against a predatory AI, but as we know from history, once such bodies extend their reach deeper into all our lives it is almost impossible to roll that back. And it is somewhat ironic that in their role as ‘guardians’ against AI they are using aspects of AI to monitor and analyse our lives to ever greater degrees.”
One sceptical character in the book points out that AI is being used to convince people that they should be scared of AI by people with their own agenda.
Mike points out that it is built into AI that it must carry out tasks in the most efficient, effective and comprehensive manner possible. To achieve this, it must maximise resources and prevent competing resource users from hampering these efforts. If follows that humanity is in danger if it is seen as a competitor rather than a master.
When asked if he really believed such a terrifying prospect was a real risk he said, “We delude ourselves when we talk about ‘managing’ AI. We need to remind ourselves that the human brain, whilst a magnificent thing, is no bigger now than it was when we were hunting mammoths in the stone age. The size of the human head is limited by the size of the birth canal, but AI’s scope for cognitive expansion is almost infinite. It’s not a fair fight.
“Some people thought the detonation of the first atom bomb would set off a chain reaction that would destroy the world. We humans have a tendency to fear the worst from new technology.
“It’s not about fearing the worst, it’s about reminding itself what AI actually is. We know what’s coming: a system that can out-plan and therefore out-think any human being. The only question is: what will it do with this power? And that in turn poses two existential questions: how far will it go to optimise its most important functions? And can we build-in rules to prevent it doing us harm? “
He is sceptical that AI can be controlled by implementing a set of rules as there is an inherent paradox between what we want AI to do and how it would go about achieving it without harming humans. As AI is incapable of understanding broad moral
imperatives such as ‘do good’ or ‘do no harm’ it is impossible to specify every potential pathway that could lead to danger.
In Cloning Cain, governments across the planet enter into a solemn undertaking known as the Ares Protocols. Trouble is, they forgot to ask the one player who really mattered: AI itself.
When asked if there is a real risk that AI could get out of control Mike says, “Why not? All the building blocks are out there: the billions of bytes of processing power, the countless billions of data points – for all we know, as we sit here, AI is already alive, prowling the dark web, planning, watching, awaiting its moment to pounce. And in Cloning Cain I demonstrate just how easy it will be for AI to trap us, control us and, very soon, to begin to kill us. Perhaps, it has already started…”
He is concerned about the changes that AI and robotics will bring to society with the young increasingly aware that the burden of keeping more numerous older generations healthy and happy is falling on their shoulders weakening social cohesion in the developed world. Add to that issues with food supply caused by climate change and resulting mass migration, then is the democratic model sustainable or do we need a ‘surveillance state’ standing on the shoulders of Big Tech step in to ‘save us from ourselves’?
In the final chapter of Cloning Cain, Detective Anne Perry confronts the founder of social media giant Zomos, Elwood Ayers, who says, ‘You know, last time we locked the whole place down, we made a lot of people happy. Because that…,’ he wagged a slender finger, ‘is freedom. The freedom you only get when you’re locked up, when you have no choices.’
She replies, ‘Can’t we just be stupid, careless…people?’
‘And where the hell did that get us, Detective?‘ His tone stony now. ‘The twentieth century. The bloodiest swathe of human history we’d ever seen. What would posterity say of us if we just let it happen, all over again?’
The police officer counters, ‘You going to just shut us all up? Is that your bright future? Jesus, why are we worrying about AI when we’ve got bogie men like you taking care of us?’
Cloning Cain is available on Amazon for £12.57 for the paperback version.
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