Aims of Evil AI: Demonic evil

“With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon.”

― Elon Musk

As the name suggests, demonic evil is evil for evil’s sake. It is performed for the express purpose of harming others. It is the kind of evil perpetrated by serial killers, or those who enjoy the process of torturing others. This is also the evil of cartoon and movie villains. It is indeed rare, because even a psychopathic killer or kitten torturer can be said to derive some (depraved) satisfaction from the act. So in some sense, we use the word ‘demonic’ when we are simply unable to understand the motives behind an evil act, even when some motive might exist.

We could imagine machines pursuing the demonic will of their human overlords. In this case, the demonic machine, whether a killer robot or a psychological tormentor, is just a powerful weapon wielded by a demonic human being who performs evil for its own sake.

Can a demonic machine exist independently of a human principal? Yes indeed. In popular culture, fully autonomous demonic AI is often depicted in the form of killer robots with an inexplicable drive to obliterate humanity. One image that comes to mind is the squid-like ‘sentinel’ killing machines designed to search and destroy humans in the movie The Matrix Reloaded. Another image is that of humanoid metallic T-800 robotic skeletons firing plasma pulse lasers at humans in the movie Terminator 2.

But even this kind of evil is not necessarily purely demonic. If the machines were killing humans as part of a struggle for dominance in an evolutionary race for survival, then can we say that their aggression is completely pointless? In the jungle, a predator may be terrifying, but it is not demonic. It is only trying to eat, or eliminate a potential threat to its survival or procreation.

This does not completely rule out the possibility of a pure demonic killing machine, with neither a drive for survival nor a hidden human agent. And we will explore some ways in which this could happen.