Skip to main content

Monitoring hyper-automatization: The self-destruction of scientists and all kinds of researchers?

Arguments, questions and philosophical extensions from the possibility of super intelligent Artificial Intelligence

globinfo freexchange

Nick Bostrom reveals the potential dangers of the super intelligent Artificial Intelligence (AI) deployment, and another occupation to be threatened in the not so distant future by the machines: Scientists and researchers responsible for this deployment!

Nick Bostrom’s job is to dream up increasingly lurid scenarios that could wipe out the human race: Asteroid strikes; high-energy physics experiments that go wrong; global plagues of genetically-modified superbugs; the emergence of all-powerful computers with scant regard for human life—that sort of thing. In the hierarchy of risk categories, Bostrom’s specialty stands above mere catastrophic risks like climate change, financial market collapse and conventional warfare. As the Director of the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, Bostrom is part of a small but growing network of snappily-named academic institutions tackling these "existential risks": the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge; the Future of Life Institute at MIT and the Machine Intelligence Research Institute at Berkeley. Their tools are philosophy, physics and lots and lots of hard math.”

"... developments in artificial intelligence will gather apace so that within this century it’s conceivable that we will be able to artificially replicate human level machine intelligence (HLMI). Once HLMI is reached, things move pretty quickly: Intelligent machines will be able to design even more intelligent machines, leading to what mathematician I.J. Good called back in 1965 an 'intelligence explosion' that will leave human capabilities far behind.

... once a super intelligence is reached, present and future humanity become the gorillas; stalked by a more powerful, more capable agent that sees nothing wrong with imprisoning these docile creatures or wrecking their natural environments as part of a means of achieving its aims.”

Bostrom gives the example of a super intelligent AI located in a paperclip factory whose top-level goal is to maximize the production of paperclips, and whose intelligence would enable it to acquire different resources to increase its capabilities. 'If your goal is to make as many paperclips as possible and you are a super-intelligent machine you may predict that human beings might want to switch off this paperclip machine after a certain amount of paperclips have been made,' he says. 'So for this agent, it may be desirable to get rid of humans. It also would be desirable ultimately to use the material that humans use, including our bodies, our homes and our food to make paperclips.' 'Some of those arbitrary actions that improve paperclip production may involve the destruction of everything that we care about. The point that is actually quite difficult is specifying goals that would not have those consequences.'”

It is questionable whether we can characterize a machine as super-intelligent in case that it seeks to survive just to produce paper clips! It would be more probable to understand the production necessity limit by itself based on pure, simple logic: no consumption = no need for production and therefore, self-evolve to a more advanced machine, producing more sophisticated products which would still have value. Besides, 3D printers already produce various products through various materials. It is unlikely that the super-intelligent machines of the future will have a mission to build only one product, even if it would not be that simple as paper clips.

The threat of superintelligence is to Matheny far worse than any epidemic we have ever experienced. 'Some risks that are especially difficult to control have three characteristics: autonomy, self-replication and self-modification. Infectious diseases have these characteristics, and have killed more people than any other class of events, including war. Some computer malware has these characteristics, and can do a lot of damage. But microbes and malware cannot intelligently self-modify, so countermeasures can catch up. A superintelligent system [as outlined by Bostrom] would be much harder to control if it were able to intelligently self-modify.'”

Maybe self-modification is not he big issue here. In any case, whether we are talking about humans, machines, viruses, computers, or any other kind of biological entity, or machine, one thing is common to all these: Energy consumption. Therefore, assuming that there will be a battle for survival, the winner will probably be the one who will manage to cut energy supply to the "enemy" and maintain its own.

Meanwhile, the quiet work of these half dozen researchers in labs and study rooms across the globe continues. As Matheny puts it: 'existential risk [and superintelligence] is a neglected topic in both the scientific and governmental communities, but it's hard to think of a topic more important than human survival.' He quotes Carl Sagan, writing about the costs of nuclear war: 'We are talking about [the loss of life of] some 500 trillion people yet to come. There are many other possible measures of the potential loss—including culture and science, the evolutionary history of the planet and the significance of the lives of all of our ancestors who contributed to the future of their descendants. Extinction is the undoing of the human enterprise.'”

Nevertheless, another question emerge: What if AI is meant to be the next step of human evolution itself? What difference does it make when we progressively abolishing human conquered concepts, like morality, from our culture?

If we want truly evolve, as humanity, we need to bring back morality. We need to develop concepts like solidarity, altruism, collectivity and put them in the core of our civilization. Otherwise, it would make no difference - and probably would be better - to be replaced by super-intelligent machines.


Probably AI has already started, after all:

At last count, Twitter had 271 million monthly active users, or less than a third of big brother Facebook’s billion-strong base. After five straight quarters of decelerating growth, the rate at which Twitter is picking up new users has finally bounced back a bit. The company has also said it will start reporting usage metrics in ways that better reflect the true reach of the platform — after all, many of the people who saw some of Twitter’s most iconic tweets, like Obama’s victory photo and Ellen’s Oscar selfie, are not registered users.”

The company says that up to 8.5 percent of its users or 23 million 'used third party applications that may have automatically contacted our servers for regular updates without any discernable [sic] additional user-initiated action.' In other words? Robots.”


Previous:

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Oct. 7 Reports Implode: Beheaded Babies, NY Times Scandal, & More

Glenn Greenwald    

Israel’s Descent Into Madness & the Holocaust Comparison

BreakThrough News   Rania Khalek was joined by Tarik Cyril Amar, a historian from Germany and associate professor at Koc University in Istanbul, to discuss Israel’s descent into genocidal fascism. Prof. Amar addresses whether it’s useful to make Holocaust and Nazi comparisons and the real reason behind the West’s unshakeable loyalty attitude when it comes to Israel’s barbarism.   

Zionist and US imperialist criminals are about to grab the natural gas off shore Gaza

globinfo freexchange   As the genocide against Palestinians of Gaza is about to be completed with an act of unprecedented brutality by the Zionists and butcher Netanyahu through the bombardment of about 1.4 million civilians in Rafah, it seems that they have already set their next primary goal. Which, in short, is to grab the natural gas resources off shore Gaza, together with their US imperialist buddies whose contribution to the genocide has been undoubtedly critical.     As already reported , in 2007, Hamas came to power and Israel launched an offensive on Gaza Strip, leaving behind 1,400 dead Palestinians, but taking with it the gas fields. Within a year, Israel announced the discovery of the Leviathan natural gas field, which did include Gaza's riches, valued at 453 billion dollars. But Gazans have been denied around 47 billion dollars in revenue. As for Tel Aviv, it's gunning to become a new hub. At that moment in time, that is 2022, Russian oil and gas were sanctioned.

Neocon Queen Victoria Nuland Ends Her Reign: Exposing a Catastrophic Career

Glenn Greenwald    

Τυχαία γεγονότα στην τριτοκοσμική μπανανία των Βαλκανίων

failed evolution   1) Συμβαίνει το μεγαλύτερο σιδηροδρομικό δυστύχημα στην ιστορία της χώρας. 2) Γίνεται αστραπιαία επιχείρηση μοντάζ των συνομιλιών του σταθμάρχη από μηχανισμό του καθεστώτος, πριν ακόμα φτάσει στα χέρια των αρχών, προκειμένου να αποδοθεί η τραγωδία αποκλειστικά σε ανθρώπινο λάθος και να βγουν από το κάδρο οι πολιτικές ευθύνες ανώτατων κυβερνητικών αξιωματούχων. 3) Αναπαράγεται το παραποιημένο υλικό αστραπιαία από ναυαρχίδα της καθεστωτικής προπαγάνδας. 4) Τοποθετείται επικεφαλής στην επιτροπή-παρωδία πρωτοπαλίκαρο του καθεστώτος Μητσοτάκη που εργάζονταν παλιά στην ίδια αυτή ναυαρχίδα. 5) Η επιτροπή κλείνει άρον-άρον την υπόθεση αποκλείοντας ουσιώδεις μάρτυρες που είχαν προειδοποιήσει επανειλημμένα τον αρμόδιο υπουργό για τον κίνδυνο μεγάλου δυστυχήματος. Σταματάει έτσι και η όποια σε βάθος διερεύνηση για την τσιμεντοποίηση του χώρου και την απόπειρα συγκάλυψης της τραγωδίας.  

Το σκάσιμο της φούσκας Μητσοτάκη με νέα επίσημη χρεοκοπία και οριστικό τέλος της μεταπολίτευσης

του system failure   Τα αποτελέσματα των εκλογών της 25ης Ιουνίου ήταν λίγο-πολύ αναμενόμενα όσον αφορά τις πρώτες θέσεις με βάση και τα αποτελέσματα της πρώτης κάλπης του Μαίου. Αν συμπεριλάβουμε και το ποσοστό της αναμενόμενης αποχής, δεν μας έδωσαν κάποια ιδιαίτερη έκπληξη. Αυτό όμως που φαίνεται να αιφνιδίασε ακόμα και το συστημικό κατεστημένο, είναι η είσοδος των δύο υπερσυντηρητικών, ακροδεξιών κομμάτων Νίκη και Σπαρτιάτες, με το τελευταίο να έχει ξεκάθαρες διασυνδέσεις με τον πρώην Χρυσαυγίτη, Ηλία Κασιδιάρη. Παρά τη μεγάλη νίκη Μητσοτάκη, οι μιντιακοί ινστρούχτορες της καθεστωτικής προπαγάνδας εμφανίστηκαν σε γενικές γραμμές "μουδιασμένοι" και αυτό οφείλεται στο γεγονός ότι το συστημικό κατεστημένο (δηλαδή τα μεγάλα οικονομικά συμφέροντα που ελέγχουν και το σύνολο των μεγάλων ΜΜΕ πανελλαδικής εμβέλειας), πέτυχε μόνο έναν από τους τέσσερις μεγάλους στόχους που είχε θέσει εξ'αρχής. Μιλώντας με ποδοσφαιρικούς όρους, ουσιαστικά έχασε με σκορ 3-1.   Ο μεγάλος στόχος πο

The Shadowy, Intelligence-Linked Group Driving the US Towards War With Iran

"United Against Nuclear Iran does not miss an opportunity to try to bring the United States closer to a military conflict with Iran. And on the other side of the equation, they also have worked very hard to oppose efforts to de-escalate the U.S.-Iran relationship."   by Alan Macleod   Part 7 - A Lesson From History   The history of Iran has been intimately intertwined with the United States since at least 1953 when Washington orchestrated a successful coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Mosaddegh had refused U.S. demands to stamp out Communist influences in his country and had nationalized the nation’s oil. The U.S. installed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as a puppet ruler. An unpopular and authoritarian ruler, the Shah was overthrown in the Revolution of 1979. Since then, it has become a target for regime change, and its nuclear program is something of an obsession in the West. Often orchestrated by UANI officials while they were in government, the U.S. has carried

How the CIA oversees the Ukraine proxy war on Russia

Geopolitical Economy Report   Several reports in mainstream US media outlets show how the CIA has helped to direct the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, and played a role in causing the conflict in the first place. Ben Norton examines the evidence.   Related: Confirmed: US imperialists wanted to drag Russia into a war with Ukraine since at least 2019

Israel Carries Out Most Sadistic Massacre, Opens Fire On Gaza Aid Convoy

Richard Medhurst  

The real reason behind TikTok ban

Glenn Greenwald /  Richard Medhurst