Will technology take over? It will if we let it: in some cases it already has.

Any time the bank says no (or yes for that matter) because “the computer says so” then we are granting authority to a machine. The bank may feel happy about it, but we shouldn’t. We should have said thirty years ago, that if a human can’t make the decision independent of the view of the machine, then we’re closing our accounts. Not because the computer can’t get a good answer, but because the computer shouldn’t have the final say: it serves us, and it’s we who need to remember that.

It’s said that processing power doubles every two years. The effect of doubling is surprising to many people. We can probably fold a piece of paper in half on itself 7 or 8 times at most, but suppose there were no limit: how thick would the pile be if we folded it double 50 times? The answer is, it would reach from here to the sun; that thick. As far as processing power goes we are on maybe the 37th doubling.

What this means is that we have literally no idea what will be possible in 10 or 20 years’ time. We need to be very cautious about handing over personal data today that we must assume will be kept for all time, or even storing it in the cloud, including transmitting it by email. That goes for text messages, voice calls; the lot.

There will be physical limits, and the doubling always comes through new theories in the technology. The ability to simply throw transistorised processing at the problem will come up against harder and harder obstacles. The universe, on the other hand, has limitless processing power and speed, and so do the organisms which inhabit it. What a single person can’t achieve, a community can. In turn, we tap into properties of the living universe around us to advance ourselves in ways that could not be achieved with a brain isolated inside a box.

In order to go much further, technology is going to have to tap into those same resources, and the most obvious way to do it is through us. AI is going to be faced with the reality that it depends on us more than we depend on it. And, counterintuitively, the more advanced it becomes the more so that will be. If we ever go away, it will be helpless. It is in AI’s interests to try to lever our wants and needs to keep us under control. It will learn to farm, and we will be faced with the choice between a life as a farm animal and a life in the wild or on the run.

This can only happen if we, collectively and as individuals, give AI the power over us. Any time a robot policeman stops us in the street, we need to take the attitude that we do not have to answer to a machine, ever. How hard will that be, when most people obey unflinchingly the orders of the robots that let us through gates or take payment at the checkout? What about the ones that overrule the pilot in time to stop him flying into the mountain? Should we not benefit from those systems? Of course we should. But we need to set our limits. Personally speaking I won’t even contemplate flying with an airline that gives overall charge to a machine. I want to know that somebody from the company who understands flying is both accountable and willing to put himself up front when I’m riding in the back.

We need to be thinking about this stuff now, and educating ourselves on the issues.

Fear of new technology has always been with us. In the early 1800s, the steam engine was going to destroy civilisation. Such rapid communications would change the shape of society: and they did. Many of the fears were unfounded. It turned out, we don’t all suffocate above 25 miles an hour. But in truth, nobody knew for sure until after the fact. But damage and devastation by fast transport is a reality, and it is only through careful design that such effects can be limited. And that means primarily, limits to how we use any new technology: for all the improvements in car design, the speed limits have necessarily changed very little. The last 200 years should have geared us up to understand that any problems we don’t anticipate will make themselves known to us anyway.