“Transcendence, A Look into the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence” by Nelson Feng Feng

The ethics of Artificial Intelligence has been an area of controversy in both Science Fiction and reality for quite a while now. Will they replace the need for humans? Will bias be a problem? Will they conclude that organic life’s imperfection is not necessary and proceed to eradicate mankind? Most of the time, it is humans vs machine, however, Transcendence (2014) explore a deeper layer on the topic: What if the AI is based on a human mind? The film does a good job at representing some of the good, as well as some of the bad that AI can bring to the world.

The renowned Golden Age Science Fiction editor and writer John W. Campbell, Jr. explains how SF can be used to explore what the future effects of science and technology might be. He writes, “To be science fiction, not fantasy, an honest effort at prophetic extrapolation from the known must be made.” SF allows people to come up with “what if” situations, expressing their concerns about what different futures a piece of technology could bring. In a way, it can sometimes even be seen as kind of protest, and to an extent satire, just like a lot of fiction in the past during the era of kings and monarchs. Concerns about AI are very real. Even people who are not familiar with the Science-Fiction genre are aware of problems that might arise as AI matures year after year. Mainly, the use of robots in replacing humans. Sure, in some fields that means safer working conditions as people are not put at risk for dangerous tasks. However, precisely because AI, and therefore robots are better at completing difficult tasks compared to people, what is there to stop them at being even better at simpler ones, taking away entry level jobs from humans? This is where the Science-Fiction genre’s importance shines.

Even with all the advancements in medicine throughout recorded history, there still are obstacles that humans have not yet been able to overcome, namely disease and immortality. A big part of the film involves Will Caster’s digital self’s (the AI) interaction with living human beings on these topics. Through his mind’s incomprehensible evolution after being freed from his flesh body, he makes break throughs in biology that allow him to cure any disease imaginable and even recreate human tissue. This is not as farfetched as it may sound as for some time now, the use of AI in the field of health has considered and is expected to be able to save a lot of lives by the fact that machines can overcome a lot of human limitations such as exhaustion and accuracy. But what about the ethics side of the subject? Machines might be more “perfect” than humans, but that does not mean accidents are out of the equation. Who will ultimately be accountable for when a mistake happens? Multiple organizations have launched initiatives trying to address the concerns:

Amidst the nascence of AI, ethics has been identified as a priority concern in the development and deployment of AI across sectors. In efforts to address this concern, there has been a proliferation of initiatives, including the establishment of organizations and principles documents to provide guidance to those working within the AI space. Some such initiatives include the Partnership on AI , OpenAI, the Foundation for Responsible Robotics, the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Initiative, the Montréal Declaration for Responsible Development of Artificial Intelligence , and the Principles for Accountable Algorithms. (Murphy et al. 3)

A lot of professionals have faith in the future role of AI in the field of Health. In fact, the Covid-19 pandemic kickstarted a more competitive than ever race for the research of a vaccine. A race in which the power of AI played no small part in. As of November 2020, “Ong et al. predicted possible vaccine candidates for COVID-19 using the Vaxign reverse vaccinology-machine learning platform that relied on supervised classification models” (Arora et al. par. 21).

Related to Will’s exponential growth of mind as a disembodied AI is the need ability to analyze vast amounts of data. The problem is, after everything the open web has to offer has been explored, there is only one data source left, humans. The way the people of Brightwood get “connected” to Will can be seen as a satire of how undetachable modern day people are from social media. It may not look like it at first glance, but tech companies behind social media apps know more about their users than they think. Take for example how related ads can show up everywhere right after searching for a specific term once on a whim. This sparks the question of where should the line be drawn? The film actually shows this concern when Evelyn finds out Will tracks almost everything about her both internally and externally. In fact, the technology that tracks similar aspects already exists, varying from simple fitness apps for daily exercise to sleep trackers that monitor a person throughout whole nights. In 2018, there was a scandal in which the fitness app Strava, released a world heat map showing the running patterns of its users using collected data. The problem was that the map also included data from active military personnel in military bases that were not supposed to be visible to satellite. “In locations like Afghanistan, Djibouti, and Syria, the users of Strava seem to be almost exclusively foreign military personnel, meaning that bases stand out brightly” (Hern, par. 8). The follow up defense for cases like these would normally be the argument that users could always just opt out of data tracking features. The reality of it is, more casual users, which make up the majority in most cases, do not pay attention to prompts asking for permissions. People do not usually know what apps do before using them, and even after extended use, only a fraction of a percentage go and change these settings. How does Artificial Intelligence connect to all of this? The biggest reason corporations collect personal data is because they can profit from it in the form of advertisement. Due to the number of users, the process of deciding what to do with data collected from a user is handled by some form of Artificial Intelligence. At some point, which a lot of people have been starting to realize in recent years, it becomes scary how well our phones know us.

While it is widely accepted that computers have helped humanity solve problems and accomplish great modern feats, the next stage of computing evolution with AI understandably raises some concerns, which the film Transcendence reflects. Artificial Intelligence is only the next step as the goal is to create something that thinks, solves, and learns by itself with minimal or no human intervention. A fact that everyone will one day be forced to accept is that Artificial Intelligence is a required steppingstone for humanity to reach the next stage of progress as there is only so much our limited flesh bodies can do. Sure, AI is by no means an easy field to understand for the average person, but that is why films such as Transcendence are important. They are a form of exposure to some of the ethical problems and consequences that might arise from the technology. It shows us what it could one day be capable of, both in a good way and a bad way.

Everything in life comes with both ups and downs, and technological progress is no exception to this rule. Artificial Intelligence is starting to prove its worth in the field of medicine by accelerating medical research to rates that could take humans alone years to achieve. Yet there is the question of whether it is a good idea for a machine to know more about us than we do ourselves. Transcendence explores some of the ethical concerns in a parallel world where the AI itself used to be human. This is the importance of the Science Fiction genre. By looking beyond the layer of entertainment, we can learn from the infinite “what if” scenarios as a way of avoiding issues before even experiencing them.

Works Cited

Arora, Neelima, et al. “The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Tackling COVID-19.” Future Virology, Future Medicine Ltd, Oct. 2020, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7692869/#:~:text=AI%2Dbased%20triage%20systems%20can,recognition%20approaches%2C%20digitalization%20of%20patient’s.

Hern, Alex. “Fitness Tracking App Strava Gives Away Location of Secret US Army Bases.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 28 Jan. 2018, www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracking-app-gives-away-location-of-secret-us-army-bases.

Murphy, Kathleen, et al. “Artificial Intelligence for Good Health: A Scoping Review of the Ethics Literature.” 2021, doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-29373/v3.

Transcendence. Directed by Wally Pfister, performances by Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall, and Morgan Freeman, Warner Brothers, 2014.