Twenty years ago today, Skynet, the fictional artificial intelligence network and antagonist of the “Terminator” movie franchise, became self-aware. The data points it used to calculate risk didn’t account for the vast nuances of human psychology, behavior and motivations. For an intelligent neural network, Skynet was really only capable of rudimentary, if-this-then-that thinking. Although Skynet was programmed to make decisions, it couldn’t learn how to interpret new kinds of data. In service of this goal, the program launches nuclear missiles, ignites a global war, kills billions of people and devastates humanity.

Source: Los Angeles Times August 29, 2017 18:00 UTC