Once, many years ago, while studying a theatre programme, I read in a note on performers the observations of the polymathic opera director Jonathan Miller who confessed his worst fear was to be tortured for information he did not possess.
My congenital morbidity tells me I can imagine a fate far worse.
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| Scene from Metropolis the 1927 expressionist silent film directed by Fritz Lang, whose Maschinenmensch is the prototypal humanoid robot for dystopian visionaries. |
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Chatbot Torquemada.Far worse, surely, would be if one survived the torture of a robotic intérrogatoire énergique to be condemned to the torture of the intérrogatoire prolongée by a fiendish inquisitor – a Chatbot Torquemada – to extract information one did not possess.
I have no doubt that such an instrument of torment for the ultimate surrender of humanity is at this moment in development at Artificial Intelligence HQ, a secret black site whose location is unknown to me . . . an example of specific information that, regardless of the consequences, I do not possess.
