AI Is Here -- 7 Days of Artificial Intelligence, and Sam Harris On AI Control -- What? Me Worry?

[ancianita]

Last edited Mon May 8, 2017, 12:19 AM - Edit history (1)

Some of this is covered in Homo Deus by Yuval Harari (2015). I highly recommend this be read soon, and by as many people as possible.

Intelligence has been decoupled from consciousness. Organic, living things are algorithms.

The AI train has left the station, and there will be a point -- since AI's speed, exponentially building data and 20,000 years of mental work can far outstrip even collective human capacities -- a point at which our intelligence and consciousness just won't matter.

We are not realizing the Brave New World that ends drudgery, begins infinite Burning Man, tempts human wars by algorithm owners.

[NWProf]

1. Now that I think about it...

When you contemplate the fact that storms are getting more violent, droughts are becoming longer and more severe; that Arctic ice is disappearing at an alarming rate, as is the ice packs on Greenland, and Antartica, and that Miami, at its current rate of flooding, will be underwater in less than 50 years.

All this is happening before our eyes and yet we have the Republican Party denying it is happening. A large portion of the main stream American media choose not to cover the story.

Elections are won with less than 40% of the people bothering to vote or even understand what is at stake. The Billionaires treat life as a game and the people who work for them as “Human Resources” to be expended in wars of oil conquest or simply to provide them with more wealth by denying the 90% under them the means to a healthy life for themselves and their families.

We have known for years that there are ancient diseases in the ice of Greenland. Diseases that our modern immune systems have no resistance to. We know too that there are asteroids that continuously pass the earth. In time, one is going to hit. We have taken no precautions to identify or prepare for this event.

You don’t often think of volcanoes when it comes to making entire species extinct, but the Permo-Triassic Extinction – the biggest extinction event of all time, when 95 per cent of all Earth’s species were wiped out 252 million years ago – coincided with the largest known volcano eruption in Earth’s history, in Siberia.

New research published last year from the European Space Agency (ESA) shows that the Earth’s magnetic field is weakening 10 times faster than we previously thought, and that it might flip within the next 100 years. This event threatens our survival because Earth’s magnetic field deflects particle storms and cosmic rays from the sun, as well as even more energetic particles from deep space.

Of course the greatest threat to human life is human life. Our increasing irrational hatred of “the other” is always in the background. Increasingly we spew hate and go out of our way to physically provoke hateful incidents. We recently elected as leader of the US a man who increasingly show signs of not being a rational human being. This man is now in charge of our nuclear arsenal and he could become the catalyst of a global nuclear war.

So with all these life ending events staring us in the face, I don’t think we have to sweat AI anytime soon.

[Hestia]

5. From BBC a couple of days ago: There Are Diseases Hidden in Ice and They Are Waking Up

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170504-there-are-diseases-hidden-in-ice-and-they-are-waking-up

Long-dormant bacteria and viruses, trapped in ice and permafrost for centuries, are reviving as Earth's climate warms

Throughout history, humans have existed side-by-side with bacteria and viruses. From the bubonic plague to smallpox, we have evolved to resist them, and in response they have developed new ways of infecting us.

We have had antibiotics for almost a century, ever since Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin. In response, bacteria have responded by evolving antibiotic resistance. The battle is endless: because we spend so much time with pathogens, we sometimes develop a kind of natural stalemate.

However, what would happen if we were suddenly exposed to deadly bacteria and viruses that have been absent for thousands of years, or that we have never met before?

We may be about to find out. Climate change is melting permafrost soils that have been frozen for thousands of years, and as the soils melt they are releasing ancient viruses and bacteria that, having lain dormant, are springing back to life.

more at link

[ancianita]

6. Thanks for this. The shifting of authority from humans to algorithms is happening all around us.

There are numerous examples of how we feed our devices such that they become decision guides, and then agents. Soon they may have sovereign status; we have to keep paying attention.

By the way, welcome to DU.

[Ligyron]

2. Welcome to DU!

A most thoughtful and concise post.

Whichever of the mentioned possibilities occur first, we surely won't be prepared. It's all about the money and next quarter's earning reports. Short term thinking is what it's all about, in the US especially.

Sad too 'cause we have so many possibilities. We really could have been a contender...

[denbot]

3. We are boned.

Over population, climate change, looming AI, humanity's future is beginning to look like playing Russian roulette with all the chambers loaded.

[ancianita]

4. Who owns algorithms is why Macon wants our help in France's climate change Manhattan Project.

People in big picture jobs like Macon see how how global control operates, and they are moving to make algorithms work as open source networks for humanist ends and planetary survival. At least for the foreseeable future.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy

Facebook was the source of the psychological insights that enabled Cambridge Analytica to target individuals. It was also the mechanism that enabled them to be delivered on a large scale.

C. A. also (perfectly legally) bought consumer datasets -- on everything from magazine subscriptions to airline travel -- and uniquely it appended these with the psych data to voter files... Finding "persuadable" voters is key ... with its treasure trove of data, Cambridge Analytica could target people high in neuroticism, for example, with images of immigrants "swamping" the country.

... Cambridge Analytica worked on campaigns in several key states for a Republican political action committee. Its key objective ... "voter disengagement" and "to persuade Democrat voters to stay at home"... In the U.S., the government is bound by strict laws about what data it can collect on individuals. But, for private companies anything goes...

This is military-funded technology that has been harnessed by a global plutocracy and is being used to sway elections in ways that people can’t even see, don’t even realise is happening to them,” she says.

“We are in an information war and billionaires are buying up these companies, which are then employed to go to work in the heart of government.

That Trump doesn't seem interested in Macon's project reveals who he's thrown his chips in with -- the top-down controllers of algorithms for profit.