CAN HUMANS REMAIN IN CONTROL OF COMPUTERS?

1. Read the text and say what these numbers refer to:

250,000 million; 1947; 65 billion; 2035; 65; 2011; two.

With silicon-based life forms – advanced computer technology – soon set to outnumber the number of people on the planet, it is up to us to put measures into place now to ensure carbon and silicon can coexist safely in a changing world. We invented silicon-based helpers to crunch our numbers and increase our productivity, and they have bound us with soft shackles of convenience and a sense of connectedness. And, although, we cannot call it war - we are engaged in a battle for control over our helpers. Otherwise, they could suddenly stop working or worse, start working for someone else.

Our romance with silicone-based life forms started in 1947 with the transistor. It would have been difficult in the beginning to imagine this useful device as a life form but in some ways, that is what it became. In 65 short years, the humble transistor evolved into an artificial life form called Watson, a computer system that recognises natural language. And, in 2011, it handily defeated two former champions on the television quiz show Jeopardy. In contrast, it took carbon-based life forms - us - four billion years to evolve from the humble amoeba to a species capable of imagining and creating Watson. Silicon-based life forms now make short work of tasks that once took us many man hours to accomplish. We think a lot about the way we interact with them. Few of us, however, think about how silicone-based life forms interact with one another.

Like we do, computers keep secrets - important, valuable secrets - from human resource and customer data to intellectual property. To identify computers with which it is okay to share these secrets - the machines use internet provider addresses, secure sockets layer certificates, secure shell keys and encryption. Soon, machine-to-machine conversations will outnumber human-to-human and human-to-machine conversations many times over. Demographic experts estimate that by 2035, our planet will be home to a little more than eight billion humans. In this same year, IP addresses - with their representative silicon-powered machines that can communicate with one another and humans - will number approximately 65 billion. About 250,000 million digital certificates will secure conversations between these machines.

We and silicon-based life forms will almost certainly still be working and evolving together. We will serve silicone-based life forms and they will serve us. When trouble comes, we will most likely be the responsible parties, as we are today. These troubles will likely involve our inability or unwillingness to maintain machines' identities, as they are today. The certificates that machines use to identify themselves to one another in terms of authentication and to keep secrets by way of encryption are nearly as critical to humans as are the machines themselves. When certificates expire unexpectedly, vital health and financial information stops flowing, power grids go dark and business, and personal, transactions stop in their tracks. Brand damage invariably ensues. Our battle for control over the behavior of silicone-based life forms begins with the battle to control their identities.

The perspective has to change from an anthropocentric world with humans as actors in control, to a world where silicon can speak to silicon without any human involvement. Our applications and past constructs have to be adapted to reflect this shift and we have to make sure that if and when machines do talk to each other - and they will - they do so safely and securely.

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