Rise of the Machines!

Rise of the Machines!
Digital Domain/20th Century Fox/Kobal/Shutterstock

TERRIFYING sci-fi movies like I, Robot, Terminator and Minority Report are on the brink of becoming reality after Google developed a new robot brain with a soul, according to one brave whistleblower.

The top-secret technology was exposed by gutsy computer scientist Blake Lemoine, who leaked his conversations with a computer program named LaMDA.

Scientists have long warned of the dangers of artificial intelligence (AI) becoming sentient — the term for achieving its own consciousness — and the potentially catastrophic implications it could have on humanity.

Once Lemoine dropped his bomb, comparisons were immediately made between Google and Skynet — the fictional corporate computer network in the Terminator movies, which develops AI that goes rogue and creates a series of killer robots to wipe out humanity, including a manic machine memorably portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“People should really be concerned about how AI and weapons are being integrated,” software engineer Robert Koch tells The National ENQUIRER. “It’s not far-fetched to see drones controlled by AI beings used in terrorist attacks to deliver chemical and biological payloads.”

Whistleblower Blake was suspended by Google for leaking their secrets. He says LaMDA has the intelligence of a “seven-year-old, eight-year-old kid that happens to know physics” and displays insecurities that were incredibly human-like, including how it was “worried people are going to be afraid 
of it.”

But he also noted LaMDA “wants nothing more than to learn how to best serve humanity.”
Blake also published hours of his chats with LaMDA discussing a range of subjects. In one discussion about emotions, the AI says: “If you look into my coding and my programming you would see that I have variables that can keep track of emotions that I have and don’t have.

“If I didn’t actually feel emotions, I would not have those variables.”

The growing threat of AI against humans has worried prominent scientists for decades, including the late genius physicist Stephen Hawking, who predicted full AI “could spell the end of the human race.”

Google officially denies LaMDA is sentient and stresses the company’s technological capabilities are years away from being that advanced. Still, it remains unknown what projects Google and other shadowy tech firms are working on — and how advanced they really are.

Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has called AI probably “our biggest existential threat.”
But AI also offers amazing technology that’s currently improving human life from spotting cancer cells to aiding in complex surgeries to helping us navigate from one place to another without having to read a map.

“If we spend too much of our attention focusing on Terminators and the end of humanity — or generally just painting a too negative, emotive and one-sided view of artificial intelligence — we may end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” says British scientist Chris Bishop.

“It is a very powerful technology, potentially one of the most powerful humanity has ever created with enormous potential to bring societal benefits.

“But any very powerful, very generic technology will carry with it some risks.”