The Research Perspective by Luigi Muzii
Who’s Afraid of Frankenstein? Asimov’s androids
robots, were
Prometheus
Clarke’s HAL 9000,
someway
scary
in
and
Dick’s
enlivening
the
myth and outlining a looming apocalypse
ending the sacred and eternal human race, climaxing in
The Matrix
trilogy.
Unlike Mary Shelley’s creature, mature humanoids like those in Her and Ex Machina always have language proficiency. After all, neuroscientists have been debunking Noah Chomsky’s theory of a universal grammar for some time now, increasingly considering language a technology. Inversely, most linguists, especially translators, still firmly believe in the language instinct. To them, fictional humanoids with their language proficiency are the embodiment of the impending menace of technological
singularity, when “The AIs are going to look back on us the same way we look at fossil skeletons on the plains of Africa. An upright ape living in dust with crude language and tools, all set for extinction.” This future in Her and Ex Machina is nearer than foreseeable because we have learnt to exploit big data. Says Ex Machina director Alex Garland, “If somebody like Google or Apple announced tomorrow that they had made [an AI humanoid], we would all be surprised, but we wouldn’t be that surprised.”
Neuroscientists have been debunking Noah Chomsky’s theory of a universal grammar for some time now, increasingly considering language a technology.
In fact, the Guardian reports Apple’s selfdriving car project as further along than many suspected, with the company scouting for test locations. Tesla, BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen and several other carmakers are pouring big money into self-driving cars. Yet, Nicholas Carr seems the only one being scared.
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