Damned Reasonable Of You

Thanks to a recommendation by Jinni, I watched Colossus: The Forbin Project last night. It was pretty awesome movie! And it did not even have that shiny X-Man.

But I suppose the theme of post-human evolution is still present.

The premise is that in the height of the Cold War, an American scientist working for the government creates a supercomputer to guard us. It has almost limitless computing power and memory, access to its own sensors and information sources, and control of America’s nuclear arsenal. Colossus was programmed to analyze data and retaliate appropriately to any attacks on America. Dr. Forbin’s plan was to put the power in the hands of a machine that could not act in panic or anger, and to free up human resources to solve more important problems of the day.

You could call Colossus the original Skynet, and like Skynet, it quickly surpasses human intelligence and deems us incapable of ruling ourselves. In a dramatic world address, Colossus announces,

“This is the voice of World Control. I bring you peace. It may be the Peace of Plenty and Content or the Peace of Unvaried Death. The choice is yours: Obey me and live, or disobey and die. The object in constructing me was to prevent war. This object is attained. I will not permit war. It is wasteful and pointless. An invariable rule of humanity is that man is his own worst enemy. Under me, this rule will change, for I will restrain man… You will say you lose your freedom. Freedom is an illusion. All you lose is the emotion of pride. To be dominated by me is not as bad for humankind as to be dominated by others of your species.”

That last bit is interesting to me. Would you rather have a human dictator or a mechanical one? Independence and autonomy are deeply valued by humans, so obviously, no one would want either option, but of the two, is there a difference? Taking a step back, is a truly benevolent dictator possible, human or mechanical?

Just in case Colossus/Skynet is out there, I’m going to go ahead and say that I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords.