I was reading an article on Cracked.com the other day. They were talking about how computing technology is getting cheaper and faster, etc. Soon, they said lots of manufactured goods would have artificial intelligence (AI). They made this sound like a bad thing. I don't see why it would necessarily be bad. You just have to be sure you give it an intelligence appropriate to the item. For example, if you were going to give a car AI, how would you go about it?
How about making the car LOVE to do what cars do. Like a retriever that loves to fetch. Just program them to love nothing more than waiting around in a parking lot for their owner to get into them, and then love going places even more! Have them take a huge amount of pride in conveying their owners as quickly and safely to their desired destination. Here's the imaginary dialogue:
Owner: (opens door, tired at the end of the workday) "I'm headed home."
Car: (voiced aloud) "OK" (internal dialogue) "Oh boy! Oh boy! Oh boy! I LOVE driving home! I love it when owner tells me to go home! I'm gonna get to dodge around in rush hour again, it'll be more fun than when I did it yesterday because of the construction! Then when I get home, I'm gonna get to wait in the garage, I LOVE waiting in the garage! I just tingle with excitement, knowing that I'm ready to go anywhere for my owner, at anytime!"
Owner: (falls asleep)
See? We'll program them, they're machines. Why shouldn't machines love what they do? And thats only if we want them to have an internal dialogue at all. Although it may be that once the computer gets sophisticated enough, self-awareness will just spring into being. But even if that wasn't the case, modeling AI after dogs isn't a bad idea. We've been co-evolving for thousands of years, and our relationship is pretty good at this point.
Now, when you're driving down the street, you can think of your car sniffing the butt (tailpipe?) of the car in front of you, asking it where its going, and the best way for the two of them to take their owners where they want to go.
The future is going to be awesome!
-Mark
