Artificial intelligence and other ways for humanity to destroy itself.

Almost every story I have ever read has negative consiquences for creating artificial intelligence. Humanity always ends up controlled, contained, or destroyed by the very beings or machines we created. All the natural consequences of creating an inelegant machine. Knowing this would be the likely outcome we still strive to create artificial intelligence. The question is why.

I believe it is like many things humanity does. We have known the consequences of global warming, over fishing, and destroying the delicate balance found in nature. Yet we continue to do so simply for the immediate reward. Also the reaping of the consequences is not likely to be within our life time but our children’s children’s life time. The immediate reward out ways the long term consequences.

The challenge of creating artificial intelligence is also hard to resist. It is interesting the things humanity is willing to create just because they can. In fiction more often than not humanity is seen as the cause for its own demise. In reality it seems quite likely humanity will eventually cause irreversible damage to our planet, ecosystem, or the species.