Why we need to understand our origins and history before building artificial intelligence

According to ancient Sumerian tablets, a race of beings from another planet called Anunnaki descended on Earth in search of gold. Why they needed gold isn’t clear yet but they needed lots of gold. When the slaves they brought with them to mine for gold revolted, they extracted the genes of pre-human race of beings (Neanderthals, Homo Erectus) and combined with their own genes to create us. This is up for a lot of debate and in Genesis 1:26 in the Bible, God says “let us create them in our own image” where “let us” means there is no one God that created us. I am a believer in this story for two reasons:

1) Our natural tendency to look up when we pray which indicates the Gods we are worshiping came from above us

2) Unlike metals like iron, copper and aluminum, gold is useless to us. Then why take all the effort to mine it and why is it precious to us? Tons of gold have kept in a temple in India under the protection of the temple God for hundreds of years. This means gold is important to the Gods which is why it is precious to us.

Most importantly, the story is an indicator to us that we were created as biological robots to obey our creators. Why didn’t the Gods simply build mechanical robots for mining and why did they take all the effort to engage in genetic engineering to create us? Because they wanted us to think on our own and also have emotional intelligence. Why emotional intelligence? Because they wanted to control us emotionally and not mechanically. How? When we talk about Gods, we do not ask ourselves how did the concept of God and the fear of an unknown all knowing entity became embedded in us. We are in the 21st century and with so much of technological advances we are still under the control of Gods through various religions. There is nothing more advanced, complicated and powerful that can control us than the concept of God.

Do we have a similar controlling mechanism for the intelligent machines we are building? What would happen if AI grew to a point where it could think and act autonomously? The scene in The Matrix where Agent Smith tells Morpheus that human beings are the most dangerous virus on the planet has stuck with me. It is not only true that we do behave like viruses, if intelligence created by us becomes powerful enough to come to such a conclusion, what is shown in the Matrix and Terminator series will become real.

When I see all the excitement and euphoria over what AI can do all it tells me is how blatantly ignorant we are about ourselves and our past.