Computers
I am not a robot. I think we all have had to check that box.
Today all we hear about AI’s. Are they really all that they are made up to be?
I mean we place our lives into their hands. Let’s look at the evolution of AI’s by starting with the computer. According to WebFX, the first computers were designed by Charles Babbage in the mid-1800s, and are sometimes collectively known as the Babbage Engines. By the 1930’s the early computers were electro-mechanical and they were either analog or were digital—such as the Model K and the Complex Number Calculator, both produced by George Stibitz. By the 1940’s the first electronic computers were developed during World War II, with the earliest of those being the Colossus. The Colossus was developed to decrypt secret German codes during the war. In 1950 the first commercial computers became available. While computing up until this time had mainly focused on scientific, mathematical, and defense capabilities, new computers were designed for business functions, such as banking and accounting. 1960 brought the microchip (or integrated circuit) which was one of the most important advances in computing technology. Many overlaps in history existed between microchip-based computers and transistor-based computers throughout the 1960s, and even into the early 1970s and this brought about the personal computers. All of this was done through coding. Before the computer we used encyclopedias, a volume of books covering current affairs and historical information. Every year a new book came out with all the new info about the previous year. So you can see computers, and the start of the internet, with all its preprogrammed information at one’s fingertips was like the greatest invention of all times. Today we even have the internet on our phones, so we are never without it. But where did this lead us?
Robots
Robots go as far back as 3000 BC, but of course, in a crude form. The earliest modern robots as we know them were created in the early 1950s by George C. Devol, an inventor from Louisville, Kentucky. He invented and patented a reprogrammable manipulator called “Unimate,” from “Universal Automation.” For the next decade, he attempted to sell his product in the industry, but did not succeed. In the late 1960s, businessman/engineer Joseph Engleberger acquired Devol’s robot patent and was able to modify it into an industrial robot and form a company called Unimation to produce and market the robots. For his efforts and successes, Engleberger is known in the industry as “the Father of Robotics.”
Academia also made much progress in the creation of new robots. In 1958 at the Stanford Research Institute, Charles Rosen led a research team in developing a robot called “Shakey.” Shakey was far more advanced than the original Unimate, which was designed for specialized, industrial applications. Shakey could wheel around the room, observe the scene with his television “eyes,” move across unfamiliar surroundings, and to a certain degree, respond to his environment. He was given his name because of his wobbly and clattering movements. According to the Mindproject, as computers have gotten more powerful, robotics research has taken off in a number of different directions: Researchers in artificial intelligence have made significant advances in the science of creating intelligent autonomous machines. These machines have been improvements on Shakey that can reason about a wider range of tasks; vehicles that can drive, sail, or fly on their own; or robots that model how animals, from insects to dogs, behave. Others have focused more on creating artificial limbs that can move and act like human limbs. Some of these have been constructed in conjunction with neuroscientists to create prosthetics that can respond to human neural impulses. Still others have focused on trying to build humanoid robots. The earliest of these robots, such as Honda’s ASIMO, are clearly mechanical beings built to mimic the basic form of human beings. More recent attempts like Eva have tried to mimic human facial expressions. Today we can get a robotic vacuum cleaner and a lawn mower. But how about those robots that look so real and talk like a human, and even think and reason as a human? Dozens of robots exist today, from robots running hotels to serving our food. How about websites like chatgpt that can do our homework, and write our essays? This is not like cutting our grass as we sit on the porch and enjoy the sun. No! These robots are able to overtake you and I. One, they can think faster than us, and they can reason in ways that could go against us. Yes, believe it or not, as we allow these robots to do our thinking, they will one day overtake us.We will not be able to think because we will have allowed our brains to become sterile. Today they are researching putting human brains inside a robot, so that people can live forever. This will be the planet of robots, and you and I will only exist through them. That means we will not have our own free will, because they will have their thoughts and reasoning that will determine ours. We have crossed over into dangerous territory. Daniel who lived around 605 BC writes this about today in God’s Word.
Daniel 12:4, “But you, “Daniel, keep these words secret, and seal up the book until the time of the end. Many will rush here and there as knowledge increases.” God told Daniel that knowledge would increase and we have seen knowledge increase by leaps and bounds. Joel lived in the 9th century BC and he too saw the future. He saw robots as soldiers, which we do have today. Joel 2:7-9 writes, “They run like warriors, they climb the wall like soldiers; and each of them marches in line, and they do not lose their way. They do not crowd each other, every warrior of them marches in his path; when they burst through the defenses, they do not break ranks. They storm the city, they run on the wall; they climb into the houses,
they enter through the windows like a thief.” Are we sure that this is something that we really want to embrace? It may sound good, but will this be the end of the human race, maybe even the end of animals and a planet that we know today? It may sound very Scifi, but it may be very real and coming to a planet near you. The world has existed for thousands of years, and we should not be in a hurry to make ourselves extinct. So let’s do our own thinking and let us make our own way in life and by doing so we’ll save ourselves and the planet. This is the way God made things and we should realize that all things that knowledge has created is not always best for us.