www.roanoke.com

John Cameron has been warning us since 1984, but humans keep flirting with dangerously good artificial intelligence. Even some scientists, generally the last in movies to realize the horrible potential of what they've created, are starting to raise the alarm:

Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society’s workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone.

Ok, so they're not actually concerned about the birth of Skynet or the rise of The Matrix, but they do suggest we should at least be thinking about the implications of killer robots and artificial intelligence powerful enough to put humans out of work.

Though, reading the article in The New York Times linked above, I wondered whether the real concern shouldn't be humans today:

Despite his concerns, Dr. Horvitz said he was hopeful that artificial intelligence research would benefit humans, and perhaps even compensate for human failings. He recently demonstrated a voice-based system that he designed to ask patients about their symptoms and to respond with empathy. When a mother said her child was having diarrhea, the face on the screen said, “Oh no, sorry to hear that.”

A physician told him afterward that it was wonderful that the system responded to human emotion. “That’s a great idea,” Dr. Horvitz said he was told. “I have no time for that.”