Analysis & Commentary:

TECHNO-PROPHET FEARS COMPUTERS WILL OUTSMART US

As reported by Mike Wendland, here is a prediction: "In offices, shops, factories and homes, there will be small machines designed to enable us to communicate with distant computers....Offices and homes will have terminals for sending and receiving messages. When mail is instantaneous, it can become a dialogue."

So wrote James Martin in a 1977 book, The Wired Society.

The same year the Apple II hit store shelves, Martin predicted a planet networked by personal computers. He foresaw the Internet, e-commerce, telecommuting, and just about every other technology breakthrough that today dominates life in the global economy.

So when this now 67-year-old techno-prophet speaks, the high-tech community pays attention. Last week he addressed information-technology executives from Ford Motor Co about the predictions in his new book, After the Internet: Alien Intelligence.

What he sees for our future is even more revolutionary than his 1977 visions. Some of it is downright scary.

In the near future, said the British-born Martin, we will:

Breed powerful neuro-computers capable of cyberthought.

Practice real-time control in medicine through implanted devices that monitor and detect bodily functions and notify us and our doctors of problems through our always-present PC (in the car, the office, at home and in miniaturized smart cards we carry in our wallets).

Buy things, open doors, start our car, and log on to computers after being identified by our facial characteristics through image-processing computer cameras.

Watch television-like devices that in turn watch us and then deliver programming based on our emotional mood and past viewing habits, accessing a hard drive that contains more movies than an entire Blockbuster video store.

Identify potential criminals and develop remedial programs by data-mining huge amounts of behavioral records collected since birth.

All this, Martin said, stems from what he calls alien intelligence. Not artificial intelligence, because there is nothing fake at all about what he sees computers doing, but alien, as in not human.

"Right now, in one profession after another the machines are outperforming humans in critical tasks," Martin said. "In the future, humans won't stand a chance against machines in certain areas."

Is he worried? In his talk, Martin was enthusiastic and excited about the potential for these powerful new machines.

He sees alien intelligence bringing about what he called a planetary correctness, solving such things as world hunger by designing more efficient farming and averting future Firestone tire problems by processing vast amounts of data and spotting potential problems before they are out of control.

But deep down, Martin sees some problems with supersmart machines.

They have the potential to take over, to become the dominant species if we do not design in and maintain strong control.

"For the immediate future, developments in alien intelligence will bring great benefits to society," he writes in the book he gave the 200 people who heard his lecture at Ford's iTek Center in Dearborn, Mich. "We are perhaps two decades from the time when we will need to worry about machines being difficult to control."

The multi-millionaire Martin, a former rocket scientist, the founder of an IT think tank called Headstrong and the author of 100 textbooks, now lives in a secluded mansion on a private seven-acre island in Bermuda.

According to Martin, networked computers will replace some executives. Factories will be more efficient and more automated. Entertainment will be more intense, pleasurable and accessible. Immense wealth will be created. Machines will make more and more corporate, government and personal decisions.

"Alien super-intelligence will probably flourish until some sort of negative experience occurs, and the public suddenly comes face to face with the threat," he warns. "By the time this happens human dependence on superintelligence will be so strong that it will be effectively impossible to stop it."