Loving a Little Rover

These days, if one pays too much attention, it’s hard to see much hope for humanity. What can we hope for when those with all the power to enact any meaningful change choose to bury their heads in the sand rather than accept any unsettling truth that might mean they have to alter their ways of life?

That is why I like to take time and see the little things that give me hope. And I also hope that perhaps this new perspective will help you see the same hope. Today, that hope is a little rover named Opportunity and its sacrifice in the name of furthering our understanding of the universe around us, even if it was in our celestial backyard.

The hope Opportunity gives me revolves around something we as human beings do so regularly that many of you may be surprised that it can be seen as profound: anthropomorphizing. WE project our humanity onto other things.

Now, why is that a cause for hope? Surely for some it’s a cause for ridicule. Something childish we do as children with our toys and teddy bears. Disney/Pixar have an entire film franchise based around it. I recall back in 2015 listening to comedian Dara O’Briain bringing myself and the rest of the audience to tears of laughter over the fate of the drillers that dug out the tunnel under the English Channel.

The gist of the joke was that the diggers were just left down there, sealed behind walls. Sure, feeling sorry for mere unfeeling machines is silly, isn’t it? They feel nothing for us, they have no consciousness, yet we cannot help but project it onto them, can we?

Now, again you may ask, why does this give me hope? This gives me hope because of what it says fundamentally about the future. Just around the corner is true artificial intelligence. For so long we’ve been so terrified of cold, unfeeling machines coming to destroy us all, machines that think purely mathematically inevitably coming around to the realization we humans need to be destroyed.

Personally, as an aside, I feel that says more about our fundamental view of ourselves than any rational conclusion about what a true artificial intelligence might do.

This view is also steeped in the mindset that morality can only come from on high, that any intelligence that comes from a source other than a grand creator must be devoid of any morality. As though we could not pass such a morality supposedly given unto us onto such an offspring. And should that morality have not come from a higher power than us, then we created our own morality, and our own intelligence grew with us, then the thought that we could not pass it on to a true artificial intelligence I think is also absurd.

Especially in light of our love for little Opportunity. If we can experience love and affection for a piece of machinery thousands and thousands of miles away, exploring an entirely new planet so that we don’t have to, how much more are we going to express for our spiritual children of artificial intelligence?

In the mere hours since Opportunity ‘died,’ there have been calls for the first manned mission to Mars to bring Opportunity home. We’ve come to care so deeply for, what some would call, a mere machine we want to bring it home. We want to honour Opportunity and show it we care.

And I say: let’s do it. Let’s express our love and admiration for Opportunity. That is the beauty of humanity. That is the extent of our love as a species. It’s a love we’re likely to pass down to an artificially intelligent offspring. It’s a beautiful thing, and thank you, Opportunity, for expanding our understanding of our universe, and of course for helping show just how much love we have left.