Gigaom AI Minute – February 18

Transcript

Many of the ideas we have about artificial intelligence come to us from science fiction. Of these, none has had more influence than the universe of Star Trek. On my hour long podcast, Voices in AI, Star Trek is cited far more than any other science fiction as a source of inspiration for the people that I interview there.

It is true that it doesn't so much predict the future, as provide a path forward into the future. AI programmers sometimes talk about wanting to make the computer aboard the Star Trek Enterprise. There was an XPRIZE to make a tricorder, a medical tricorder like the one that Dr. McCoy uses, and there is no doubt that Uhura had in her ear, on the original show, nothing short of a bluetooth device.

Star Trek is interesting because it achieves its utopian future with a little bit of a conjuring trick. In order to bring about that future, it had to eliminate all want and need from the world. There didn't just have to be plenty for everybody, but there had to be more than enough for everybody to be freed from their everyday toil in order to seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before. This may well be the case, that a utopian world does necessitate an end to human want. But it may be a future that technology can, in fact, deliver.