HOME » Computers and Technology "When Computers Get Smarter Than Us, Will They Become Dangerous?" The Futurist Asked

Not long ago, I received an e-mail from a fellow futurist who happens to live in Ghana who asked this question of some seventh and eighth graders in his area. Interestingly enough, most all of the students said "yes, when our computers become more intelligent than human beings, they will pose a threat and become dangerous to our existence and civilization." That shouldn't surprise anybody considering all the Hollywood movies on the topic, and the Skynet system from Terminator.

After all there have been plenty of advanced warnings from science fiction writers, from Hollywood, and from futurists. However, knowing this could actually prevent it from happening, as these students now will be designing those computers for the future, and therefore they will be well aware of what they're doing as they are doing it. Of course, one could also say that every great civilization that has ever been created in the past, that is to say historically has had its own problems with human beings, and back then there were no computers to blame.

Perhaps it is the humans that are the problem and not the computers, or the tools they create to destroy each other. After all, you've always heard that saying; "guns don't kill people, people kill people." And if people didn't use guns to kill other people, they would use knives, stones, rocks, and beat each other over the head with sticks I suppose. Isaac Asimov one science fiction writer had often philosophized about this and he came up with a solution; "Asimov's Rules for Robots."

Maybe it's time we need to exercise the use of these rules and the software that we create for the future. And maybe it might be wise to create computers that are smarter than us, so they don't make the lousy decisions that humans have in the past. In other words, maybe the computers we create which are smarter than we are, could actually end up preventing us from killing each other. That is also a possible future, and one I like you to consider today. Think on it.