Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Bogelbaum here. The date is January nine nine. Robert Williams,
Speaker 1: a year old factory worker in a Ford Motor Company
Speaker 1: casting plant in Flat Rock, Michigan, is asked to scale
Speaker 1: a massive shelving unit to manually count the parts there.
Speaker 1: The five story machine used to retrieve the castings is
Speaker 1: giving false readings, and it's William's task to go up
Speaker 1: and find out how many there actually are. While Williams
Speaker 1: is up there doing the job, a robot arm, also
Speaker 1: tasked with parts retrieval, goes about its work. In doing so,
Speaker 1: their paths accidentally cross, and the robotic arm catches the
Speaker 1: young man, striking him in the head and killing him instantly,
Speaker 1: And thus, on this wintry day, Williams becomes the first
Speaker 1: human in history to be killed by a robot. The death,
Speaker 1: of course, was completely unintentional. There simply weren't safeguards in
Speaker 1: place to protect Williams. No alarms notified him of the
Speaker 1: approaching arm, and there was no technology in place to
Speaker 1: alter the robot's behavior in the presence of a human person.
Speaker 1: As of nineteen seventy nine, the artificial intelligence involved wasn't
Speaker 1: sophisticated enough to do anything to prevent such a death.
Speaker 1: Jury agreed that not enough care had been put into
Speaker 1: the design of the robot. William's family wanted ten million
Speaker 1: dollar lawsuit for his wrongful death from the Unit Handling Systems,
Speaker 1: a division of Litton Industries, the manufacturer that designed the robot.
Speaker 1: In the ensuing years, roboticists, computer scientists, and artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: experts have continued to struggle with the issue of how
Speaker 1: robots can safely interact with humans without causing them harm.
Speaker 1: Decades later, reports of human deaths caused by robots or
Speaker 1: artificial intelligences feel more commonplace. Uber and Tesla have made
Speaker 1: the news with reports of their partially autonomous cars getting
Speaker 1: into accidents and killing passengers or striking pedestrians. Though many
Speaker 1: safeguards now are in place, the problem still hasn't been solved. However,
Speaker 1: none of these deaths are caused by the will of
Speaker 1: the robot. These programmed machines don't to have a will,
Speaker 1: just a set of operating conditions. But there's a worry
Speaker 1: fanned by the flames of science fiction stories like The
Speaker 1: Terminator or the Matrix, that artificial intelligences could develop a
Speaker 1: will of their own, and in that development, the desire
Speaker 1: to harm a human. We spoke with Shaman Whitson, Associate
Speaker 1: professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University
Speaker 1: of Oxford and chief scientist and co founder of Morphy's Labs.
Speaker 1: He calls this concern the anthropomorphic fallacy. This, he said,
Speaker 1: is the assumption that a system with human like intelligence
Speaker 1: must also have humanlike desires e g. To survive, be free,
Speaker 1: have dignity, et cetera. There's absolutely no reason why this
Speaker 1: would be the case, as such a system will only
Speaker 1: have whatever desires we give it. Value misalignment, he argues,
Speaker 1: is the greater existential threat, where a gap exists between
Speaker 1: what a programmer tells a machine to do and what
Speaker 1: the programmer really meant to happen. Whitson explained, how do
Speaker 1: you communicate your values to an intelligent system such that
Speaker 1: the actions it takes fulfill your true intentions. The discrepancy
Speaker 1: between the two becomes more consequential as the computer becomes
Speaker 1: more intelligent and autonomous. Whiteston tells us that the even
Speaker 1: greater threat, however, is scientists purposefully designing robots that can
Speaker 1: kill human targets without human intervention for military purposes. The
Speaker 1: Guardian reports that three d and eighty one partly autonomous
Speaker 1: weapon and military robotics systems have been deployed or are
Speaker 1: under development in a dozen countries, including China, France, Israel,
Speaker 1: the UK and the US. In AI and robotics researchers
Speaker 1: around the world published an open letter calling for a
Speaker 1: worldwide ban on such technology, and it's currently endorsed by
Speaker 1: almost four thousand researchers in the field and over twenty
Speaker 1: two thousand other concerned humans, including folks like Stephen Hawking
Speaker 1: and Noam Chomsky, and the United Nations is meeting again
Speaker 1: in to discuss if and how to regulate so called
Speaker 1: killer robots. Today's episode was written by Brian Young and
Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Klang. For more in this and lots
Speaker 1: of other all two human topics, visit our home planet,
Speaker 1: TAW staff works dot com.