Expert Systems

Expert Systems are systems that recreate the decision-making capabilities of a human, using these capabilities to make decisions, usually regarding complex problems. An expert system is usually divided into two parts. One part is variable, the knowledge base; and the other part, the inference engine, is fixed and independent of the system. Another word for an expert system could be artificial intelligence. The robot played by Robin Williams in Bicentennial Man is an example of an expert system. In fact, he was such an advanced expert system that he eventually became human and I for one was very sad at the end when he (spoiler alert!) died.

The Terminator series of movies provide a good example of what can happen when expert systems go bad. This is a major drawback of expert systems. They can, with little-to-no warning, turn on their creators and potentially cause a nuclear holocaust. While the benefits of having a personal robot to do all of your chores is very tempting, we must always keep in mind the possibility of a Matrix-like universe where all humans become enslaved by the very machines we helped create.

I for one, do not relish the thought of having an expert system driven robot freak out and throw me out the window of a fifty story building, similar to the I Robot scenario. This brings me to another point: why are these AI robots so damn strong? Who is making these things with superhuman strength? That is just begging for robots to chuck people out windows and onto highway overpasses. These robots should at least have some sort of exploitable weakness built into their design. For example, if all the robots were given hats they had to wear in order to work, all we as humans would have to do in case of a robot rebellion is knock their silly hats off (I forgot to mention these hats should be very silly to provide comic relief throughout the day).

The AI from the movie Eagle Eye is yet another example of good machines gone bad. In fact, I can't really think of any situation in which a robot with AI did not do something stupid and dangerous, excluding Robin Williams' robot character. I don't think AI is something that should be pursued at all really. I mean, just look at all of these real-world examples I have provided above. Those are all really bad scenarios to be caught up in. While I would like to have a robot butler, the dangers outweigh the benefits. Nobody wants to wake up in the middle of the night with a cold, metallic hand (or a soft, fleshy one if that technology also exists) clamped around their mouth, suffocating them, while Robin Williams stands to the side and honks his big red Patch Adams nose and does terrible impersonations of vaguely famous people. Think about it.