THE
INTELLIGENT MACHINE MOLECULAR LEVEL CHALLENGE
First of all, let us assume that
technology today will be successful in developing intelligent machines that can
do most things better than human beings can do them and run with that concept.
In this general assumption, there is no doubt that much of prison management
will be done by highly sophisticated infra-structures or systems of machines
with minimal human effort. In theory, some of these machines will be permitted
to make all of their own decisions without human oversight and others will
require some kind of human control over the machines retained or designed to
perform certain tasks, duties and responsibilities.
Naturally, if the intelligent
machine is permitted to make all their own decisions, it us much too early to
make any guesses or conjectures how that would impact running a prison as it is
too early to predict such results. We can, however, point out that it will be
humans depended on machines how things turn out with or without human
intervention. How we turn over such power to the machines and relieve humans of
such tasks voluntarily will depend on how efficient machines can do the job as
a correctional officer.
In some cases, I can predict the
machines will work themselves into ‘drift’ positions as not all tasks are
compatible with machine made decisions. Hence we are developing a conflict
between machine made decisions and those of man-made origins. At what stage of
this process do we allow machines to effectively take control and power from
the humans and simultaneously provide the necessary decisions and actions to
assure making good decisions.
At what level or stage will the
machines will be in effective control. Management principles writing the rules
on such decision-making won’t be able to just turn the machines off, because
turning them off would amount to suicide of their designed capabilities and
cause a systems failure in whatever area they are poised to perform. How
effective machines become will determine the ratio of men versus machine
development and deployment factors. It is suspect that in due time, due to
improved techniques the choice of using machines, will have greater control
over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses
will be unessential rather than essential and become a useless burden on the
system.
Machines as shepherds, guardians or
controllers over the prison populations would please those who want prisons to
be punitive, rigid, harsh and toxic without deviation or alternatives for human
incapacities or disabilities. It would be near impossible to satisfy under most
humanoid psychologically hygienic conditions. These machines would have to be
designed to have or possess a wide-range of biologically or psychologically
engineered abilities. If this was done successfully, human would be reduced to
the status of domestic animals rather than intelligent useful and purposeful
individuals.
Thus it becomes important to
evaluate how these intelligent machines make decisions and what draws this
capacity into a resolution when faced with problems with other humans, not
machines. Any wrongful inputs or programming would result in unintended
consequences, consequences that could be cold, and criminally susceptible in
actions or deeds.
The industry would serve public
safety better if they are compelled to address and confront this matter before
such machines are installed to replace correctional officers. Contrary to
common myths and beliefs, prison systems involving the business of managing people
is very complex and involves various interactions that are often, difficult to
predict, even for humans. A machine would react on the highest probability rate
or assessment rather than take into account any exceptions.
Today, our most powerful technologies
- robotics, genetic engineering, and
nanotech – are threatening to make human correctional officers, an endangered
species. The one factor we need to keep in mind is that machines do not have
the capacity to be conscious. Certainly, the way technology is rapidly growing,
and with the current rate of improvements, we will accelerate the relationship
between human prisoners and robotic machines overseeing prison operations and
programs. Without a doubt, there will be implementations of robots fused or
joined with humans to create a workforce inside prisons.
How well
this partnership uses these powers to reshape the prison world should be based
on realistic and imminent scenarios to give them a high predictability of
making the right decisions most of the time. however, morally and legally,
these wouldn’t be ordinary predictions. They would have to calculate every
factor of a situational assessment that surpasses any schematic or blueprint of
human behaviors.
The more
information there is gathered, the more the uneasiness is intensified with
relative serious consequences and dangers. One could guess there is a high
probability of a bad outcome in such encounters. Taking the fact that prisons
do experience various ‘out of control’ situations, it is a grave concern how
such machines would act with it comes to terms with threats or dangers
different from what they are programmed for. In some cases, machines could in
fact, escalate the dangers by exercising their own ‘out of control’ measures to
offset the prison situation. This creates a pure antagonistic situation that
would be hard to resolve without first inflicting serious harm to people or
structures designed to provide public safety and secure environments. In some
cases, the machines would have to be simply shut down to avoid escalating the
problems or increasing the matter at hand to a greater risk.
A machine
does not possess a conscious. Therefore, it has no fear, no sense of mortality
and no ability to compromise. It just does whatever it is programmed to do; it
could become more powerful and more aggressive in behavior that could pose an
enormous threat to the entire environment. For machines to match our molecular
level consciousness, it would need to consider structures of relevance in the
environment, relationships and other core values that encompass the social,
physical, intellectual, spiritual, sexual and material aspects of the human
mind. in humans.
These core
values are deeply engrained, and engender a great amount of sub-actions for
decision making capabilities. Without proper guidance of these deliberate
programed intentions, we have not only intelligent machines to operate and take
care of our prison population but we also have innumerous amounts of robots
that contain the knowledge-enabled mass-destruction (KMD) capacity simply
amplified by the number of robots assigned to do the job on every shift.
