(Inspired by 2004’s “I, Robot” starring Will Smith.)
Will something resembling a robot uprising (as seen in the film) occur by EOY 2035?
For the purposes of this market I am loosening the resolution criteria a bit more than what literally occurs in the movie—the “uprising” can happen in just one city, humans do not necessarily need to die or be seriously injured, and an AGI does not need to be the mastermind of the rebellion. For example, if some crazy mad haxx0r managed to seize control of all Tesla vehicles within a certain city and have the cars drive themselves outside of city limits for a full day while city infrastructure was being reprogrammed by him (or something) that would count as a “yes.”
Essentially:
1) Widespread disruption due to automata failing to fulfill their normal tasks
2) Disruptions cover at least one major metropolitan area
3) Disruptions are due to intent from either AGI or a malicious human (internal idiocy would not count e.g. Elon Musk deciding to do a little trolling in DC for a week)
4) Disruptions in automata go on for at least 24 hours
5) The actions of the automata are not recognized as being directly to the material benefit of either their owners and/or human society at large: this means that only one condition here needs to be satisfied.
Examples:
5a) a robot uprising may occur against the owners’ short-term interests (they stop doing the laundry without permission or something) in favor of humanity’s long-term interests (they work together to save the last key species in an ecosystem essential for biosphere regulation).
5b) a robot uprising may occur in the owners’ short-term interests but counter to those of humanity as a whole, I.e. a small group of wealthy robot owners command their bots to destroy any and all assets of unionized workers employed in their factories.
5c) a robot uprising may occur wherein agricultural robots act against owners’ short-term interests by setting crops on fire (destroying profits) and humanity’s long-term interests (prolonged hunger/shortages due to reduced agricultural output).
Any of the above three scenarios would satisfy condition #5, but conditions #1-4 must also be satisfied to resolve as a “yes.”
Movie for context:
Related questions
@DanPowell Debatable. The don’t necessarily disagree with you, but most would probably say their actions are orthogonal to humanity’s long-term goals.
Willing to edit the description if you feel strongly about this.
@Ophiuchus Im just trying to estimate what “The actions of the automata are not recognized as being to direct the material benefit of either their owners and/or human society at large” means.
The robot uprising in the movie was mathematically proven to the direct benefit of human society at large, otherwise it would not have been possible. The viewpoint characters acknowledged that and indicated that they preferred freedom and higher variance to a better overall situation.
@DanPowell Ah, I see the confusion now—the “and/or” in my description for long-term interests of society at large vs. short-term owner interests was doing too much explicative work. I expanded out some possible scenarios to clarify, please let me know if you feel that condition still doesn’t make sense.
@Ophiuchus Ah, they must be seen as either acting against their owner’s perceived interest or humanity’s perceived interest. It’s unlikely that there will be a scenario where the two are aligned enough to not apply.