One of my favorite movies of all time is the movie Chappie, which was directed by Neil Blomkamp, who also directed District 9 and Elysium. The movie is set in the 22nd century in South Africa, which has made a robotic police force to help control crime. The designer for the robots, played by Dev Patel, made an artificial intelligence (AI) chip that will give a robot the ability to think like a human. He wants to test it on a robot but must steal a defective one in order to, but in turn he gets kidnapped by some gang members who wish to sell the robot for profit. To make a long story short the program works and the robot, called Chappie, develops artificial intelligence akin to that of a human. The movie has lots of messages about life and death, but also shows how artificial intelligence can benefit the whole world. So in this essay I’ll talk about why we should pursue artificial intelligence, although some people say that it would be a bad idea. I will discuss reasons we don’t want to, why those reasons aren’t very good, and why we should.

“People are always fearful of something they don’t understand.” That’s a quote from Chappie, and also one of the reasons why people don’t want to pursue artificial intelligence. Look at the past, if humans don’t understand something they are scared of it and retaliate. History has shown us that most of the time it has turned out well, and I believe the same will be true with AI. Another reason is that celebrities and big names have warned against it. For instance Stephen Hawking told BBC on December 2 2014 “the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.” Elon Musk, chief executive of SpaceX, also warns against it, saying “AI is our biggest existential threat.” The last reason is that movies and media are scaring us. Think of all the movies that show robots destroying the world, such as Terminator and Doctor Who. They all depict them in a bad light and warn us not to get AI. All of these reasons aren’t very good reasons and there’s an argument against each.

The first is that even if we don’t understand something or something is different, and we retaliate, it usually turns out for the better. Like with all the other races, when people first inhabited the Americas they treated the natives in a very bad way, and now we know that it was wrong but we didn’t think so then. Now I’m not comparing the fight against AI with racism but they have a lot of similar traits. For the second reason not to, the celebrities and what they say about AI is just the opinion of a few individuals. There are also people who think AI is a good thing. For example, as reported in the New York Times, in June 2012 Google constructed a network of 16,000 computers that taught itself to recognize cats based on millions of images from YouTube videos. Livescience reports that Mark Zuckerberg and Ashton Kutcher jointly donated $40 million dollars to the company Vicarious FPC, who is working to create an artificial neocortex. And although there are bad movies about AI, there are also good ones, such as Chappie or Ex Machina.

The reasons we should have AI outweigh the reasons we shouldn’t by a lot. The first is that it could advance the whole human race. Think of the leaps and bounds we could make in science and medicine if we discovered the secret of AI. It could also help with criminal cases. Imagine a completely impartial and fair judge and jury. That would greatly help with innocent people getting convicted for a crime they didn’t do. Or what if they commissioned thinking robots as police officers or law enforcers? That would dramatically decrease crime rate all over the world. The last reason is that it’s just plain cool. Imagine if you had a robot who could think and talk that you could do stuff with. To me, that would be one of the greatest things ever.

There are some reasons that we shouldn’t make robots with artificial intelligence, but I think we should because the benefits are so big. I talked about some reasons people think we shouldn’t, why those reasons can be discounted, and why we should. I hope I convinced you of the same and if not atleast made you see why it would be a good idea.