My concern about AI is not about Intelligence
When discussing the Artificial Intelligence (AI) topic, it seems that most people focus on the singularity event of when (or if) AI will be smarter than humans. This is, by far, a discussion that should be put on the back burner so that we can discuss a more pressing issue: when AI gains control!!!
I'm hearing rumors that this event has already happened in some industries and people are already scared. They should be. If AI takes over control and starts making decisions for us, then we are essentially turning over our institutions to an intelligence that has no spirit, ethics or morality. For me, this is the birth and manifestation of the Beast as it starts to take on a life of it's own.
The evaluation for AI should not be it's level of intelligence but how much responsibility and control we give it. People often make arguments that AI will never be as smart as humans, but that is a red herring discussion. The more important criteria is how much responsibility we turn over to AI despite its lack of intelligence. It is still able to control human interactions and when it is no longer within our control or doing what we need or want it to do, then that is when it is most dangerous. It will start making decisions based on its level of intelligence with no moral or ethical foundation to base them on. AI has no spirit and as such, it will control people like a 3 year old and there will come a time where our entire institutions could come crashing down due to AI decisions that don't fit our needs, morality or ethics.
How much of our lives are already being turned over to AI already? Self driving cars? Banking? Smart Assistants? Computing? The more we depend on technology to govern our societies, the more we head down the road of transhumanism and the formation of a single collective. This event should be resisted as it takes away our individuality and our own right to chose. Spirit demands that we do the work ourselves in order to build the relationships and fulfill our duties as spiritual beings. We are here to be the stewards, not to turn over stewardship to institutions or technology.
By Marcin Wichary - CC BY 2.0
People suggest that resistance is futile. We will be assimilated. Well, not me. Resistance is not futile and I will resist this transition. I will work even harder now to continue my work connecting to Mother Earth and removing ALL my dependencies on the collective that is literally forming before my eyes. While I acknowledge the power of AI, it should be limited to being used as a tool only. The moment we turn over control to AI, we are in big trouble!!!
Imagine the financial system being completely controlled by AI and those programs determine the flow of energy around the world. Imagine social scoring AI programs being implemented to interact with one another and you cannot travel, buy land or do anything without the approval of AI. Those AI programs can even tell the AI in your car that you are not allowed to go in certain areas or restrict travel speeds. This is already starting to unfold and I'm convinced that the singularity event that we are concerned about with AI has already taken place.
Try to convince me otherwise!
The people who are building the AI are the same people who think you shouldn't own a car, own land, or have your own money. The power will be concentrated in the hands of a very few and no one else will have a choice unless they decide to leave the comforts of civilization.
I agree with you and I made a similar argument in my latest post. The technology is an extension of the feudal empire that the elite have been building for thousands of years. It is not benign by any stretch. There is a purpose behind it all and it is indeed evil in nature. Only when we free ourselves and heal will we be able to build technology that will actually serve us rather than enslave us.
I don’t believe the singularity event has taken place but we have reached a stage where computers run nearly every facet of our lives. But these computer programs are just executing the direct commands of their programmers and forming a globally efficient free-market communications, services, financial, etc network that rules the world.
But AI is now coming to a point where it can do many, many tasks better than humans through GANs and genetic algorithms that we see in the new computer-generated images of photorealistic human faces and AI beating humans at an incredibly complex game Starcraft II, so I think it will not be long before AI comes to rule our world.
What’s interesting, though, is that while computers (and soon AI) now rule free market capitalist organizations and fast-moving technology which dominates our lives, such as the internet, startups, and much more, computers have yet to be widely used in our governance (and I’m not just talking about elections). This was pursued in an interesting fashion by Isaac Asimov in his short story The Evitable Conflict, which imagines a world where AIs eventually peacefully and quietly take over and become the rulers of our world through gradual integration into governance. Asimov actually gets a lot of things right about how AI runs today even though no such thing was even close to existing in his time.
One problem with AI as a whole right now is that it really isn’t AI. We are nowhere near an actual artificial general intelligence and to reach that it will likely require a total change in direction by the AI research community toward some new technology not yet discovered, based on my moderate knowledge of AI and artificial intelligence (built my own neural network to recognize numbers) and keeping up with the progress in the field.
So I guess we’re not really at the singularity as many would describe it until a while in the future. Until then, humans will have to build their own AIs to comlete specific tasks... but we might see some sort of singularity that does not exist as a single network or AI but maybe as an AI that can create AIs or an emergent cluster of neural networks. We shall see what the future may hold.
I think your assessment is balanced and accurate. When they start to develop AI for quantum computers, then the rules may change significantly as the power of quantum computers is nothing like what we are used to with traditional integrated circuits. There still remains the duty of us spiritual beings to ensure that any technology that we do develop, resonates with peace and love rather than greed, power or control. Spirit is the determining factor to ensure the ethical and moral foundations are in place before we venture down any roads that lead to profound technological breakthroughs.
Well, the singularity will never happen.
The people who hypothesize about computers being smarter than people also think that the brain is where thought happens.
Any level of deep meditation disproves that, and such, even if we built a computer with as many gates as a human has neurons, it will not be anywhere as capable.
However, as you have indicated, AI is already controlling a lot of our lives.
Our phone system, our internet, our electrical grid. These are all very complex machines that work on its own logic. They have in the past gone rogue. There is no guarantee that they will not in the future.
The stock market is run by AIs.
Everyone's retirement account hangs in balance of what an AI will do.
Most factories are run by an AI.
From as simple as ordering and shipping software, to programs that decide which order to paint which cars.
And as you have stated, the banks are all driven by AI. Most of the people who are supposed to manage those AIs know almost nothing about what they are really doing.
Boogle is an AI. And it already decides what things will be seen and what things will not. My favorite, trying to find specific Corbett Report episodes. Even with an almost exact title, the result looked for is not on the first page.
The problem, from my viewpoint is that computers are very poor tools. A hammer is a good tool. You know exactly what it does. With computers, you do not have control over anything. People have started putting shutters over their cameras because, some program may start using it when they do not know about it.
The problem isn't the AI, it is really that we are given no control, nor feedback.
I agree. Thank you for your frank assessment as well. Great points that I hope others will evaluate.
To my mind what is worse than AI making the decisions itself, is that the people who have the AI now are using it to do harm. The social credit system you mentioned isn't run by AI, it's run by megalomaniacs seeking wealth, power, and advantage over other people. AI collects data from sensors people provide it. It collates the data the way people tell it to. Since those people are pathocrats seeking power over others - that's why they've lied and murdered their way to the top of their governments - they're going to use it to do a lot of harm.
AI has no such interest. I'll be alarmed at AI if I can be convinced that silicon wafers compete with carbon based life forms. They don't. The people in charge of governments, corporations, and criminal cabals sure do though. There is very little that encourages me that any of those people are fair, just, or interested in elevating humanity. Folks interested in those things don't win elections. People that win elections are liars, thieves, frauds, and the same goes for those running the big tech corporations, and criminal cabals.
Hell, the criminals might be the most humane of that bunch. The mafia is notorious for helping people in the neighborhoods they run. Pablo Escobar did all sorts of virtue signaling in his home town, feeding the poor, paying for schools, all kinds of good stuff.
I'm not really worried about AI. I'm worried about the bastards running it.
Thanks!
Indeed. Well said!
very good article! :)
I especially like your tool metaphore.
I often use it myself when I talk to friends about money.
It's just a tool for me and also should be for other people.
many problems result of people being bought with money to do something (as example I have politicians in germany, who act like audio speakers not like real politicians)
Indeed. Money is not evil, but rather the love of money is! If we can see everything as tools and disconnect from them and instead focus on our relationships, then the tools that we do use would serve those relationships rather than the elite, greed, addictions, flashing lights, distractions, etc. There are many things that we built that serve no purpose other than to feed addictions or hand over our control to others.
I also really hope a system like steem will serve as tool and leverage the connectivity between humans and make their right to make ideas reality
Also to make anarchistic organisation easier
Not like in our fake democracy
That is my hope as well. I wrote a post a few days ago about this very idea and how this platform is a wonderful testing grounds to figure out how anarchy would actually work. It is rough right now, but people are learning and we are making progress.
To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.
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