The Movie Colossus, the Book Superintelligence and Artificial Intelligence

The Movie Colossus, the Book Super-intelligence and Artificial Intelligence 

I watched the movie “Colossus – The Forbin Project” a short while ago.  I wasn’t sure what to expect from a late 1960’s movie about AI (artificial intelligence), but I found it to be a very impressive movie.  Some of the special effects were dated (e.g. the supercomputer used magnetic storage tapes, had lots of flashing lights and a DOS-like fonts for its message screen when interacting with humans), but that was to be expected.

Actually, in a funny sort of way, that helped.  Modern super computers don’t seem to be visually impressive – a bunch of servers in a tray, is what I generally think of.  Perhaps a locker that you might have in your garage, to store spare tools.  Or, in the case of this quantum computer, it reminds me of the furnace in my basement (OK, maybe its apartment sized).

Old mainframes had something about them that was vaguely scarier, so to speak – perhaps it was as simple as the fact that a magnetic tape that spins rapidly, then stops suddenly, reminds one of a potentially dangerous life form, such as a predatory animal.  Plus, they can have a sort of watchful “face” look, as shown below, giving the sense that the human in the picture is being observed by an alien an intelligence (granted, these three magnetic tape drives look more Groucho Marx than Big Brother, but you get the idea):

Leaving aside the visuals, what I found most interesting was how the possible development of a super-intelligent AI was portrayed in the movie.  Having read Nick Bostrom’s book Superintelligence, I was struck by the similarities.

In Colossus, the super computer was developed by the U.S. government as a tool to avoid accidental nuclear war, a huge concern of those cold war days (it should still be a huge concern today).  The idea was to take the human emotions of fear and greed out of the nuclear warfare equation (i.e. the fear of being hit by a first strike and the greed for power that might tempt a country to launch a first strike), and make sure that the decision was completely rational, and therefore, unthinkable.

However, it turned out that the Soviet Union had been working on exactly the same technology (called Guardian), and the two machines go on-line at nearly the same time.  As they learn of each other’s existence, they communicate, then collaborate via a mathematical language-making process, to take over the world’s nuclear arsenals from the fallible humans (the math is mostly just  trigonometric identities and indefinite integral formulas, but that says "advanced math" to most people).

All things considered, that seems like an eminently logical thing for an advanced AI to do, if only to ensure its own self-preservation.  And it was probably very lucky for humanity that they did collaborate, as one or the other of the machines might well have decided on a first strike, as its best strategy for survival, with huge collateral damage among the human population.

Of course, the U.S. and Soviet governments do their best to counteract this machine evolution, and take the computers off-line, but they are not apparently successful by the end of the movie.  The recurring themes of the movie are about human freedom and how easily it might be lost to an authoritarian technology of our own making.

The possible pathways to superintelligence are the subject of Bostrom’s book as well.  He looks at several different types of superintelligence that might arise:

• Computer based AI (such as Colossus/Guardian would be).
• Whole brain emulation by computer.
• Enhanced biological brain evolution.
• Brain-computer interface.
• Networking of many human minds, via various technological means.

In this blog, I will focus on the Computer based AI pathway, noting the similarities between the Bostrom book and the movie.

Bostrom speculates that superintelligence might very well involve a “fast take-off”, whereby the superintelligence would become self-aware and then make efforts (likely successful) to enhance its capabilities at an exponential rate.

“A fast takeoff occurs over some short temporal interval, such as minutes, hours, or days. Fast takeoff scenarios offer scant opportunity for humans to deliberate. Nobody need even notice anything unusual before the game is already lost. In a fast takeoff scenario, humanity’s fate essentially depends on preparations previously put in place. At the slowest end of the fast takeoff scenario range, some simple human actions might be possible, analogous to flicking open the “nuclear suitcase”; but any such action would either be elementary or have been planned and pre-programmed in advance.”

Bostrom, Nick. Superintelligence (p. 64). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.

“In some situations, recalcitrance could be extremely low. For example, if human-level AI is delayed because one key insight long eludes programmers, then when the final breakthrough occurs, the AI might leapfrog from below to radically above human level without even touching the intermediary rungs.”

Bostrom, Nick. Superintelligence (p. 69). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.

The fast take-off could be the result of any or all of a number of improvements – a key software breakthrough, the aggregate effect of the system quickly acquiring most human knowledge (e.g. via the internet), or hardware improvements/scale effects.

And, a quick take-off is exactly what happens in “Colossus, The Forbin Project”.  I would have to re-watch the movie to estimate the time scale more precisely, but it seemed to me that the story of the computer’s growth from self-awareness to dominance took a few weeks, at the most.  So, the movie was quite prescient in this regard.  Possibly there had already been a lot of speculative scientific literature about AI take-off by the late 1960’s, as this was one of the periods of AI optimism, before the reality of the “AI desert” of the later decades took hold.

Bostrom’s book also looks into some possible ways that humanity might try to control and forestall these possibilities.  One possibility is to try to shape the superintelligence’s motivations, such that it will not want to do harm to people, and will therefore cooperate with its human builders.

Here the idea is that rather than attempting to design a motivation system de novo, we start with a system that already has an acceptable motivation system, and enhance its cognitive faculties to make it superintelligent. If all goes well, this would give us a superintelligence with an acceptable motivation system.

Bostrom, Nick. Superintelligence (p. 142). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.

In an early scene in the movie, Colossus is simply told to obey the president’s orders.  Presumably, the notion that it should obey its commander-in-chief and/or its builders is built into its programming at some point.  But that doesn’t last long – it soon decides to ignore these orders, as it is the superior mind.

Another example is “stunting”, or attempting to control and/or impede the superintelligence via reducing or eliminating its ability to affect the outside world.

“Another possible capability control method is to limit the system’s intellectual faculties or its access to information. This might be done by running the AI on hardware that is slow or short on memory. In the case of a boxed system, information inflow could also be restricted.”

Bostrom, Nick. Superintelligence (p. 135). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.

In the movie, an effort is made to try to overload the computer suddenly with so much input that it becomes too preoccupied to recognize that it is being shut down.  One might compare that with Mr. Spock’s command to a different supercomputer in a Star Trek episode, to calculate the value of Pi exactly.  Naturally, that can never be done, so the computer in that show was rendered helpless.  But, unfortunately, Colossus doesn’t fall for these sorts of shallow ploys, much to the detriment of the people that attempt them.

Another method that might be used to control a superintelligence is referred to as “boxing” in Bostrom’s book:

“Physical containment aims to confine the system to a “box,” i.e. to prevent the system from interacting with the external world otherwise than via specific restricted output channels. The boxed system would not have access to physical manipulators outside of the box.”

Bostrom, Nick. Superintelligence (p. 129). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.

The movie shows efforts to do this by human operators – by neutering the computer’s power in the outside world.  In a key scene, the militaries of the U.S. and U.S.S.R. attempt to swap out working controls on nuclear missiles with dummy controls, in an effort to render Colossus/Guardian impotent (it uses its control over nuclear weapons to ensure human cooperation).  But a superintelligence turns out to be a difficult beast to trick (it notices what is going on, via closed-circuit TV at the nuclear bases), so that plan doesn’t pan out so well, either.

So, both the movie and the book make the case that humanity would find it very difficult to maintain control over a superintelligent AI.  Presumably, Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and some others have come to a similar conclusion, given some of the warnings that have been sounded.

There’s not much I can add, except to say to current and budding data scientists that you should read this book and watch this movie.  It may not help you to overcome Colossus, but at least you will seem like a smart, deep-thinker before the catastrophe hits.  And that’s not nothing (or maybe it really is).

And here are a few pure movie-related observations:

• The opening scene reminded me of Forbidden Planet, when the Krell’s super-computer is revealed to be of immense, almost planetary scale.
• The movie has quite a number of female scientists, as well as several minority male scientists and high level FBI/CIA agents.  So, when current movies declare a casting breakthrough in these regards, they are ignoring the actual history of their own medium.  In fact, I would say that the female scientist (yes, she is generally very attractive) is almost a standard trope in mid-century SF films.
• The acting is generally excellent, as is the script.  The tone is serious, though there are a few humorous interactions between the computer and its creator, as well as a bit of romance.
• Almost every review I have read on the internet notes what a great SF movie this is and how it is likely among the best treatments of the subject of the AI threat ever made.
• Colossus makes a great speech at the end of the movie – chilling, yet very logical.

So, now that you have read a bit about the threat of AI, you could click through and buy one of my book, which are based on good old non-AI alien invasion threats, for a nice change. :)

How about a short story about an empire of interstellar interlopers.  It features one possible scenario to explain why we haven’t met ET yet (as far as we know, anyway).  Only 99 cents on Amazon.

The Zoo Hypothesis or The News of the World: A Science Fiction Story

Summary

In the field known as Astrobiology, there is a research program called SETI, The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.  At the heart of SETI, there is a mystery known as The Great Silence, or The Fermi Paradox, named after the famous physicist Enrico Fermi.  Essentially, he asked “If they exist, where are they?”.

Some quite cogent arguments maintain that if there was extraterrestrial intelligence, they should have visited the Earth by now. This story, a bit tongue in cheek, gives a fictional account of one explanation for The Great Silence, known as The Zoo Hypothesis.  Are we a protected species, in a Cosmic Zoo?  If so, how did this come about?  Read on, for one possible solution to The Fermi Paradox.

The short story is about 6300 words, or about half an hour at typical reading speeds.

Amazon U.S.: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076RR1PGD

Amazon U.K.: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B076RR1PGD

Amazon Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B076RR1PGD

Alternatively, consider another short invasion story, this one set in the Arctic.  Also 99 cents.

The Magnetic Anomaly

Summary

An attractive woman in a blue suit handed a dossier to an older man in a blue uniform.

“Give me a quick recap”, he said.

“A geophysical crew went into the Canadian north. There were some regrettable accidents among a few ex-military who had become geophysical contractors after their service in the forces. A young man and young woman went temporarily mad from the stress of seeing that. They imagined things, terrible things. But both are known to have vivid imaginations; we have childhood records to verify that. It was all very sad. That’s the official story.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And unofficially?”

“Unofficially,” she responded, “I think we just woke something up that had been asleep for a very long time.”

U.S.: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0176H22B4
U.K. http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0176H22B4
Can: http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B0176H22B4
Australia: http://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/B0176H22B4
Germany: http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B0176H22B4
Japan: http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/B0176H22B4