The Technological Singularity

by Murray Shanahan

To conclude this chapter, I want to tell you a story. The story is set in the near future, at a time when some of the artificial intelligence technology we have been discussing has matured, but perhaps not yet to the point where human-level AI has been created. The story is about three AI systems. The first is a marketing AI that belongs to a large multinational corporation, which we will call Moople Corp. The second system is a police AI operated by the US government. The third system is a security AI controlled by the government of a small developing country. The story begins when Moople Corp.’s marketing AI is given responsibility for maximizing the pre-sales of their new wearable computing device. After due deliberation, using the complex model of human behavior that Moople Corp. has built up from its unfathomably deep data vaults and applying the latest, most powerful optimization techniques, the marketing AI comes up with a plan. To excite the market, it announces a pre-launch giveaway. Two hundred of the wearable devices will be handed out for free in one of its flagship stores on a first-come, first-served basis. As required by US law, the marketing AI notifies the local police AI of the pre-launch event because it expects it to attract a crowd. Indeed, when it hears of the event, the police AI estimates (using its own model of human behavior) that 5,000 people will turn up to the flagship store. Moreover the police AI calculates that there is a 10 percent chance o...