Thread: Artificial Intelligence

Greetings all,
There has been a lot of blather about artificial intelligence of late. In my early teens I developed an interest in science fiction and got all manner of books out of the Napier Library. A book of short stories contained one which popped into my mind the other day. It was about scientists developing a sort of flying policeman which would intervene if something stupid like killing someone. It was self replicating and equipped with some sort of weapon with lethal and non lethal settings plus what were called learning circuits, which we would call artificial intelligence. For a start all went well and lives were saved but after a while the bots decided that there were still to many killings so shot to kill each time. Next the bots decided that there were other living things being killed so hunters got zapped for sneaking up on a deer and farmers got zapped for trying to harvest their crops.
So the scientist's developed a new bot to kill the other bots but included the same learning circuits as before. All went well for a bit until the bots decided that there were other things that needed to be killed as well. The story ended there leaving the obvious conclusion to the readers imagination. This must have impressed me as I can still remember quite a bit of the story 60 years later. A story ahead of its time perhaps. Prophetic as well perhaps.
Regards Grandpamac.