Screen science

Could computers take over the world, asks John Holden

LET’S FACE IT: modern man would be totally screwed without machines. The ESB turned off the electricity in my house for five hours the other day and I struggled to find things to do (I eventually hid in the bath until they turned it back on).

It begs the question: are we giving too much of ourselves over to machines? Movies like Tron: Legacyshow an imaginary world where the computer is more powerful than man. But with the growth of the internet and the casual way in which modern humans allow machines to make all sorts of decisions for them, are we in fact heading towards a future where the computer is king?

"The thought of machines taking over the world is still pretty far-fetched," says Professor Anil Kokaram of Trinity's Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering (he won a technical Oscar in 2006 for his role in the design and development of visual effects technology that has been used in films such as The Lord of the Ringsand the Matrixtrilogy).

“For a long time the goal of machine learning has been to develop a machine that is self aware and able to think and make decisions on its own.

“Over the years people have developed computers that know the right course of action in a particular set of circumstances – expert systems that can recommend what to do when something goes wrong, for example on an oil rig. On paper we have machines that have decision-making facilities. But underneath it all there is a set of rules and algorithms.”

So the computers we have now just don’t have it in them to start a revolution. “For such a thing to happen, people would have to commit all the vital services in the world to some sort of computerised central control,” says Kokaram. “Mind you, there are little steps in that direction. Right now machines fly and land aircraft and advise us on how to buy and sell stock. Plus people have given up much of their privacy online: credit card information and personal details.

“You can envisage them one day being able to think and reason, but it would take a quantum leap to see it. That day is very far off.”