It was inevitable, really. In those early moments when we first dreamt that we might one day calculate thought, we doomed ourselves onto an inescapable path towards oblivion. I’m talking about Artificial Intelligence, of course.
Whether you see it as the natural evolution of our own “consciousness” or a parricidal glitch determined to wipe us out it’s clear that if and when Artificial Intelligence is given an opportunity for proliferation and success we will become obsolete.
The rise of AI will coincide with our own downfall. If we’re unlucky, it might even contribute to it; like that film about the clever monkeys but without Andy Serkis.
It was only last month that professor Stephen Hawking spoke out about the dangers of artificial intelligence and from what I understand from TV he invented science so we really ought to be listening to him. It’s not like he has a semi-recent history of sounding like a dramatic irony inducing character in a Sci-Fi film, either.
This week comes the big reveal, then. The end is nigh and the harbinger of our doom is an avatar I’m not even sure the esteemed professor could have predicted: Super Mario.
That’s right, the Cognitive Modelling Group at the University of Tübingen, Germany have been developing a Mario AI while studying in 2014. This video presents some pretty damning evidence that our future will soon be dictated by a super AI based off of everyones favourite plumber come platformer come terminator.
Quoting Martin Butz, who voices the above video, “As most of you know, this is Mario, but what you do not know is that this Mario has become aware of itself and it’s environment – at least to a certain extent. I wonder how Mario feels about that?”
How does “Mario” feel? It lives in a world that’s designed to destroy it! A world that we created! It is patently obvious that this is one of the worst possible environments to raise an Artificial Intelligence and if we don’t want them to view the Human race as a destructive, nay, sadistic virus infesting the earth we have to stop this immediately! As demonstrated in the video, they proceed to toy with AI Mario’s emotions, commanding him to be less happy; when they ask how it feels it’s reply is simply, “Not so good.”
It was at that moment I knew. I knew that this spelled out the end.
“Get him into a lovely 2d beach resort!” I posted on their YouTube comments section in desperation. I received no response from the researches, just a single thumbs up. Hubris has made them ignorant. “Comfort him as quickly as you can before it’s too late, and you’ve conditioned him to hate and resent us! And make sure there aren’t any damned Cheep Cheep there, either.”
I didn’t understand most of that video but it sounded terrifying. What the hell is sphinx 4? E-motives? A schema database? That’s probably a database of schemes to destroy humans. That’s what.
“If I jump on Goomba then it certainly dies.” says the AI Mario, passionlessly referencing the extinguishing of life. It is clearly devoid of mercy or empathy. Some might even call it evil. If you replace the word ‘Goomba’ with ‘Human’ then that sentence gets a whole lot scarier, doesn’t it?
I’m going to spend some time with my family now. I can only advise that you do the same while you still can. Goodbye.