Artificial Intelligence. What if my car is trying to kill me?

 What if my car is trying to kill me? And what if the artificial intelligence police robots are in on it?

I am the sole passenger in a car being driven autonomously and using the latest artificial intelligence. I’m wearing my seatbelt. I’ve got no driving impairment should I need to deactivate autopilot and take manual control.

My car detects an oncoming car about 1 mile ahead of us on a two lane, north/south road. That car is being driven manually. It has 4 passengers. One is pregnant. There is also two baby kittens (to make this all the more horrific)

Their car swerves into my lane. My car has some calculations to make
If I hit them I will survive. Their car goes off the cliff. The AI computes that my injuries would be low-grade. Artificial Intelligence calculates everyone in their car would die either on impact or shortly thereafter. And the kittens too. If my car swerves away I will fall off a cliff and 100% likelihood of my death.

They are teachers. I am a banker. They create societal value but get paid little. I create little good but get paid a lot. They are 4 taxpayers with one in the waiting. I am devilishly clever with my taxes.

My credit is impeccable. None of them have good credit.

I use Google and Chrome to the max and I have given them all the permissions for my credit card information, driving history, criminal convictions, IRS payment history, earnings history, payment history, rental/mortgage payments and travels. It knows everything on my LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. And, Google also has the rankings and correlations between all my friends.

My car knows only the rough picture of the other cars voyagers. They use Bing, they don’t use social media that much cos they like being “off the grid”.

I would like to live, but would the car like me to live?

What happens if the car has to make a choice between me and Warren Buffett. I expect it be on the short side of that exchange. But what if it’s a choice between me and Warren Buffett’s solitary goldfish being auto driven to mate with another goldfish at Bill Gates house?

What if the choice is between me and a Beyoncé wig being delivered to her stylist?

What If I’m being taken to work and the car learns in 30 seconds there is a likely collision with Warren Buffett’s goldfish. will it give me an opportunity to plead for my life.

Can I grovel with artificial intelligence. Will it impartially listen and decide?

If it decides against me will it quickly fill up the car with some lethal gas that will knock me out so I don’t have to suffer the pain of the collision?

What if the car hates my fucking guts and wants me to feel the pain?

What if the car frames me for a murder I didn’t commit? What if I’m like that guy in making a murderer? That would suck, me having to prove myself against a car. What if the car had the voice of Morgan Freeman? Who’s not going to believe that voice?

Can the car speak to my toaster? it probably can, and my refrigerator. Can the car deal drugs to kids outside school, then I get charged for a crime my car committed.

What if my car wants to kill me to collect my insurance policy?

It could rig the brakes to not de-accelerate, then after we crash, it rigs the brakes to work again. It’s a perfect murder!
What if the car makes a slip up and there’s a clue…but at the scene the Artificial Intelligent Robot Police investigating the scene of the accident are on the take?

What if I decide to get another car, what if my old car tell the new one some bad shit about me?

Would the new car be my friend or side with my old car?

What if the car tortures me? I’m being driven and it wants to know a secret, it starts blaring the music at the highest volume and puts on some ultra violent disgusting videos. Then it pumps in some noxious smells and makes the car really really hot, then really cold. Then it slams on the brakes and I bang my head and then it starts interrogating me.

What if my car is reading my emails and it knows I’ve been plotting against it with my microwave?

What if it’s looking thru all my texts and it wants to know who Siri is?

What if it kills someone who it thinks is gonna snitch on me for taking the office paperclips?

What if it had some sick obsession with kids and it made me stalk them in school playgrounds?

What if it made the car really hot, it locks the doors and I have to take off all my clothes, then it pops the door open, I get out and I’m naked and in front of a school playground, the kids cry and scream, then the car turns its super-duper brain (deluxe model!) off. I try to explain to the cops what happened and they don’t believe me. I go to trial and settle for no jail time but I’m a registered sex offender. What if it does it again? Now, I’m in jail as a perv and I’m the low guy in the jail hierarchy getting traded for loose cigarettes.

Then, after 5 years I get out of jail, come home and the car has married my wife, it’s taken all my money, turned my family against me.

Can I buy an insurance policy that saves me, just in case of this type of jam. Will it be a Warren Buffett company selling me the policy and it’s got some small print:

‘SAFE TRANSPORT OF WARREN BUFFETT, HIS GOLDFISH (AND BEYONCE’S WIG) IS PARAMOUNT TO OWNERS LIFE’.

Postscript

Technology is developed by humans inside institutions governed by States. To understand the influence of politics on AI, it is necessary to look at the entire stack that creates the Artificial Intelligence —  which includes the State.

The state has hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to assign out and it has executive authority over what the recipients do with it. Politicians hire scientists, fire scientists, and set their priorities.

That car I am (hopefully not) trapped inside, is an ideological apparatus embedded inside a political machine. It, and all of its contents, belongs to the State. We are at its mercy.

Will the algorithmic ethics be transparent, can I see every line of code before I buy the car?

Weaponized pundits, experts, tech gurus, VC’s, wall street bankers, lawyers and people wearing suits will all tell you it’s your car, it serves you (didja ever see that episode of Twilight Zone ‘To Serve Man… remember that shocking end when it’s a cookbook! Oh shit, I didn’t ruin it for you did I. Sorry. See it anyway, it amazing)

You can’t keep bad politics, greed, ethics and corruption out of AI development if it’s already on the inside

Who programs the programmers?