I recently saw the newest edition, Terminator Genisys with my oldest son and two things came to mind: First, it makes up for the disaster that was T3 and T-salvation (we both really enjoyed the movie) … and second, we are way too close to having the same scenario happen now.
Spoiler alert – skip this paragraph if you have not seen the movie yet….
In the movie, says Larry Bellehumeur of Novotech, a program is created called Genisys and it allows you to move your entire life into it by capturing data from all sources: You, your activity, your car, your home, etc. By becoming self-aware and having all of this data, it is able to take control over the humans.
Ok, how exactly is this different than what is happening now?
Apple already has its own resources to capture so much of your data (iTunes knows your music, iCloud has your files, your iPhone knows your preferences, etc). And don’t get me started on Google. I mean, Google knows about a ‘flu outbreak in your city long before everyone else does by recording who searches for symptoms of flu and seeing how the pattern changes. And lest we forget about Amazon who knows what you buy, where you send it, what books you read and much more. To put it simply, much of the world’s important data is on one of these many cloud servers.
So, are we setting ourselves up for a potentially similar fate? I’d like to think not. I’d like to think that we’d keep the role of technology to helping us so that we are always in control. However, I did recently read that robots in England have passed tests that would qualify them as being ‘self-aware’ … Scary stuff!
The bottom line
One of the things that I love and loved about this most recent installment of the Terminator series was that it often brought up philosophical questions that were much deeper than you would expect from an action movie.
At what point will we need to put a stop on the development of machines as a protection mechanism for humans?
Do we keep on proceeding at the breakneck pace that we are at now with no oversight, regardless of the possible consequences?
Are we going to slow down the move towards storing all of our key data in centrally accessible locations?
All good questions. For now, I think we are ok, but how long before we know if we have gone too far?
The author of this blog is Larry Bellehumeur, M2M / IoT Consultant at Novotech Technologies
See also: ( When even Fido has a FitBit…. & Meet Sawyer, the robot who may take your job)
