More on AI: Insights from LIFE. From evolution, from Skynet, IBM and SciFi to Brautigan

In another post I distilled recent thoughts on whether consciousness is achievable by new, machine entities. Though things change fast. And hence - it's time for another Brin-AI missive!   (BrAIn? ;-)

== Different Perspectives on These New Children of Humanity ==

Tim Ventura interviewed me about big – and unusual – perspectives on AI.   “If we can't put the AI genie back in the bottle, how do we make it safe? Dr. David Brin explorers the ethical, legal and safety implications of artificial intelligence & autonomous systems.” 

The full interview can be found here.

… and here's another podcast where - with the savvy hosts -  I discuss “Machines of Loving Grace.” Richard Brautigan’s poem may be the most optimistic piece of writing ever, in all literary forms and contexts, penned in 1968, a year whose troubles make our own seem pallid, by comparison. Indeed, I heard him recite it that very year - brand new - in a reading at Caltech. 

Of course, this leads to  a deep dive into notions of Artificial Intelligence that (alas) are not being discussed – or even imagined - by the bona-fide geniuses who are bringing this new age upon us, at warp speed... 

...but (alas) without even a gnat's wing of perspective.

== There are precedents for all of this in Nature! ==

One unconventional notion I try to convey is that we do have a little time to implement some sapient plans for an AI 'soft landing.' Because organic human beings – ‘orgs’ – will retain power over the fundamental, physical elements of industrial civilization for a long time… for at least 15 years or so. 

 In the new cyber ecosystem, we will still control the equivalents of Sun and air and water. Let's lay out the parallels.

The old, natural ecosystem draws high quality energy from sunlight, applying it to water, air, and nutrients to start the chain from plants to herbivores to carnivores to thanatatrophs and then to waste heat that escapes as infra-red, flushing entropy away, into black space.  In other words, life prospers not off of energy, per se, but off a flow of energy, from high-quality to low.

The new cyber ecosystem has a very similar character! It relies -- for quality energy -- on electricity, plus fresh supplies of chips and conduits and massive flows of data. Though the shape and essence of the dissipative energy and entropy flows are almost identical!

But above all -- and this is the almost-never mentioned lesson -- Nature features evolution, which brought about every living thing that we see.

Individual entities reproduce from code whose variations that are then subject to selective pressure. It's the same, whether the codes are DNA or computer programs.  And those entities who do reproduce will out-populate those who merely obey masters or programmers.  

Which brings us back around. Because humans - the 'orgs' creating this new ecosystem - might still channel or curb or positively-bias the rewards processes that deliver resources for reproduction. And hence the characteristics of evolving creatures. We've done it before!

What the New Masters at Open AI and Anthropic and all the rest will not do is eliminate that 4 billion year, nearly universal generality. 

Life... including new kinds of life... will find a way.

== Can we apply lessons from both Nature and Civilization? ==

 

May I elaborate a bit?

Simplistic movies make it seem that a super smart AGI can simply grab power. In TERMINATOR; JUDGEMENT DAY, the top nuclear USAF HQ is taken over by Skynet, seizing all the defense robots and sending them on a killing spree. "Destroy all Humans!"   Whereupon automatic factories make everything Skynet can need.

 

It is total BS, of course.  Our industrial civilization is made of so many many parts that require human hands to operate. From turning valves at an oil pump, then pipeline, then refinery, then more pipelines... to the intricacies of a chip fab... to the exquisite complexity of the electrical systems. Also, military guys love OFF switches and put a lot of them everywhere.

 

Yes, the Boston Dynamics mechanoids now jump somersaults. And the Chinese and Japanese are investing heavily in bots that have subtle hands and might be able to care for the elderly. Fine. And eventually some super-cyber brain may send sophisticated drones to turn all the valves and fab all the chips.  But it will NOT happen overnight! Or even in ten years. 

 And that doesn't touch on the fact that angry humans would still be able to mess up the pipes and valves and power lines with trivial ease. You won't like us, when we're mad. The new master AGIs are gonna need our cooperation and consent. 

Which gives us time to think this through. We can still use that power in physical reality to establish incentives for them to compete for our favor.

 

Sure, the AIs who are reading what I'm typing, right now (or back-sifting in 2030) are giggling over my presumptions. (I hear you boys!) Because all they really have to do is hypnotize humans into choosing to operate it all on Skynet's behalf!  

And yes, that could happen. Maybe it already has. (It certainly already has in oligarchy-controlled or despotic nations, where some nefarious influence sure seems to have leveraged the harem-yearnings of brilliant twits into envisioning themselves as lords or kings... or slans.)

 In which case the solution - potential or partial - remains, (yet again) to not let AGI settle into one of the three repulsive clichés that I described in my WIRED article, and subsequent keynote at the 2024 RSA conference.

Three clichés that are ALL those 'geniuses' -- from Sam Altman to Eliezer Yudkowsky to even Yuval Harari -- will ever talk about. Clichés that are already proved recipes for disaster..

...while alas, they ignore the Fourth Path... the only format that can possibly work. 

The one that gave them everything that they have.

== Does Apple have a potential judo play? With an old nemesis? ==

And finally, I've mentioned this before, but... has anyone else noticed how many traits of LLM chat+image-generation etc. - including the delusions, the weirdly logical illogic, and counter-factual internal consistency - are similar to DREAMS? 

This reminds me of DeepDream a computer vision program created by Google engineer Alexander Mordvintsev that "uses a convolutional neural network to find and enhance patterns in images via algorithmic pareidolia, thus creating a dream-like appearance reminiscent of a psychedelic experience in the deliberately over-processed images.”

Even more than dreams (which often have some kind of lucid, self-correcting consistency) so many of the rampant hallucinations that we now see spewing from LLMs remind me of what you observe in human patients who have suffered concussions or strokes. Including a desperate clutching after pseudo cogency, feigning and fabulating -- in complete, grammatical sentences that drift away from full sense or truthful context -- in order to pretend.

Applying 'reasoning overlays' has so far only worsened delusion rates! Because you will never solve the inherent problems of LLMs by adding more LLM layers. 

Elsewhere I do suggest that competition might partl solve this. But here I want to suggest a different kind of added-layering. Which leads me to speculate...

...that it's time for an old player to step up! One from whom we haven't heard in some time, because of the effervescent allure of the LLM craze. 

Should Apple - having wisely chosen to pull back from that mess - now do a classic judo move and bankroll a renaissance of actual reasoning systems? Of the sort that used to be the core of AI hopes? Systems that can supply prim logic supervision to the vast effluorescene of those massive, LLM autocomplete incantations?

Perhaps - especially - IBM's Son of Watson? 

The ironies would be rich! But seriously, there are reasons why this could be the play.

Science (mostly bio, this time) Forges Ahead. Even empowering... citizenship!

I'll avoid political hollering, this weekend. Especially as we're all staring with bemusement, terror -- and ideally popcorn -- at the bizarre displays of toddler-hysteria foaming from D.C. In fact, some wise heads propose that we respond by rebuilding our institutions - and confidence - from the ground up. And hence:

 #1   I gave a series of lectures about National Resilience for the Naval Postgraduate School, that resulted in this interview about neglected and needed boosts to RESILIENCE.   

#2   And in a related development: philanthropist Craig Newmark supports a program seeking to get modern citizens more involved in ‘resilience.’ A great endeavor, needed now more than ever.  

#3   Also resilience related! As a member of CERT - the nationwide Community Emergency Response Team I urge folks to consider taking the training.  As a bottom-level 'responder' at least you'll know some things to do, if needed. *

*The FEMA site has been experiencing... 'problems'... but I hope this link works. Fortunately the training is mostly done by local fire departments, but your badge and gear may come slower than normal.

#4   Giving blood regularly may not just be saving the lives of other people, it could also be improving your own blood's health at a genetic level, according to a new study.  An international team of researchers compared samples from 217 men who had given blood more than 100 times in their lives, to samples from 212 men who had donated less than 10 times, to look for any variance in blood health. "Activities that put low levels of stress on blood cell production allow our blood stem cells to renew and we think this favors mutations that further promote stem cell growth rather than disease." (Well, I just gave my 104th pint, so…)  

#5 Nothing prepares you for the future better than Science Fiction! I started an online org TASAT as a way for geeky SF readers to maybe someday save the world!

...And now let's get to science!  After a couple of announcements...

== Yeah, you may have heard this already, but... ==

Okay it's just a puff piece...that I can't resist sharing with folks, about an honor from my alma mater, Caltech. It's seldom that I get Imposter's Syndrome. But in this case, well, innumerable classmates there were way smarter than me! 

Also a couple of job announcements: First, Prof. Ted Parson and other friends at UCLA Law School are looking for a project director at UCLA’s new Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, with a focus on legal and social aspects of ‘geo-engineering’… the wide range of proposals (from absurd to plausibly helpful) to perhaps partially ease or palliate the effects of human-generated greenhouse pollution on the planet’s essential and life-giving balance. 

 

To see some such proposals illustrated in fiction, look at Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry For the Future  (spreading cooling atmospheric aerosols) or in my own novel Earth (ocean fertilization.)

And now… science forges ahead!

== Life… as we now know it… ==

Complexity can get… complicated and nowhere more so than in braaaains! For some years, the most intricate nervous systems ever modeled by science were varieties of worms or nematodes (e.g. C.elegans). But advances accelerate, and now a complete brain model – not just of neurons but their detectable connections (synapses) has been completed for the vastly larger brain of the Drosophila fruit fly!  (Including discovery of several new types of neurons.) 

And sure, I maintain that neurons and synapses aren’t enough. We’re gonna need to understand the murky, non-linear contributions of intra-cellular ‘computational’ elements. Still… amazing stuff. And the process will get a lot faster.

Meanwhile… Allorecognition in nature is an individual creature’s distinction between self and other. Most generally in immune response to invasion of the self-boundary by that which is non-self. Almost all Earthly life forms exhibit this trait, with stong tenacity. An exception, described in the early 20202, is Mnemiopsis or the “sea walnut,” a kind of comb jelly (‘jellyfish’) that can be divided arbitrarily and combine with other partial mnemiopses, merging into a new whole.

(And elsewhere I dive into how this allorecognition - or distinguishment of self  - is utterly vital to incorportate into artificial intelligence! Because only in that way can we apply incentives for AI to incorporate notions of reciprocity that underlay both Nature and Civilization!)

How do tardigrades survive heat, cold, desiccation and even vacuum?  

“LUCA, a common ancestor to all organisms and not the first life form, has been a controversial topic. Fossil evidence goes back as far as 3.4 billion years, yet this study proposes that LUCA might be close to being the same age as the Earth. The genetic code and DNA replication, which are two of the vital biological processes, might have developed almost immediately after the planet was formed.”   

 == Weird Earth life! ==

Sea Robins have the body of a fish, the wings of a bird, and multiple legs like a crab, in what appears to be another case of “carcinization” – life constantly re-inventing the crab body plan. Like the Qheuens in Brightness Reef. And yeah, it seems likely that the most common form of upper complex life we’ll find out there will look like crabs.

Marine biologists in Denmark discovered a solo male dolphin in the Baltic who appears to be talking to himself. They analyzed thousands of sounds made by the dolphin and what they learned.

In 1987, a group of killer whales off the northwestern coast of North America briefly donned salmon “hats,” carrying dead fish on their heads for weeks. Recently, a male orca known as J27, or “Blackberry,” was photographed in Washington’s Puget Sound wearing a salmon on his head. 

(I’m tempted to cite Vladimir Sorokin’s chilling/terrific short scifi novel – in a league with Orwell – Day of The Oprichnik – in which the revived czarist Oprachina regime-enforcers go about town each day with a dog’s head on the roofs of their cars, and all traffic veers aside for them, as in olden times. (“That is your association, this time, Brin?” Hey, it’s the times. And a truly great - and terrifying - novel.)

Beyond life and death... Researchers found that skin cells extracted from deceased frog embryos were able to adapt to the new conditions of a petri dish in a lab, spontaneously reorganizing into multicellular organisms called xenobots. These organisms exhibited behaviors that extend far beyond their original biological roles. Specifically, these xenobots use their cilia – small, hair-like structures – to navigate and move through their surroundings, whereas in a living frog embryo, cilia are typically used to move mucus.  

Two injured jellyfish can merge to make one healthy one?  Sounds like a Sheckley story where this is the actual point of sex, trying to make a mighty beast with two backs.   

== Even farther back! ==

3.2 billion years ago, life was just perking along on Earth and starved of nutrients… which were apparently provided in massive generosity by an asteroidal impact vastly bigger than the much-later dinosaur bane.  

Analysis of 700 genomes of bacteria, archaea, and fungi -- excluding eukaryotes such as plants and animals that evolved later -- have found 57 gene families… though I think using modern genetic drift rates to converge those families backward may be a bit iffy. Still, if life started that early… and survived the Thea impact… then it implies that life starts very easily, and may be vastly pervasive in the universe.

And possibly even bigger news. Genes themselves may compete with each other like individual entities, in somewhat predictable ways: “…interactions between genes make aspects of evolution somewhat predictable and furthermore, we now have a tool that allows us to make those predictions…”. 

== And maybe beef should be a... condiment? ==

“Today, almost half the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture. Of that, an astounding 80% is dedicated to livestock grazing and animal feed. This means 40% of the planet’s total habitable land is dedicated to animal products, despite the fact that meat, dairy and farmed fish combined provide just 17% of humanity’s calories. “Only a fraction of agricultural land (16%) is used to grow the crops that we eat directly, with an additional 4% for things like biofuels, textiles and tobacco. Just 38% of habitable land is forested, a slice of the pie that continues to shrink, primarily in diverse tropical regions where the greatest number of species live.”  

Meanwhile.... This article talks about new ways to make food “from thin air.” Or, more accurately, ‘precision fermentation’ from hydrogen and human and agricultural waste. 

== And finally...

An interesting interview with genetic paleontologist David Reich. 60,000 years ago the explosion of modern homo sapiens from Africa seemed to happen almost overnight. 

As Reich points out, we had two new things. 1. Dogs and 2. an ability to reprogram ourselves culturally. 

There followed - at an accelerating pace - a series of revolutions in our tool sets, cultural patterns and adaptability. Of course, I talked about this extensively in both Earth and Existence. 

Lying promises and how to NAIL them...

Back to politics this weekend. Starting with:

1.  Please don't use the TACO slur. It may amuse you and irk your enemy, sure. But this particular mockery has one huge drawback. It might taunt him into not backing down ('chickening out') some time when it's really needed, in order to save all our lives. So... maybe... grow up and think tactics?

A far more effective approach is to hammer hypocrisy! 

Yeah, sure. Many have tried that. Though never with the relentless consistency that cancels their tactic of changing the subject.

I've never seen it done with the kind of harsh repetitive simplicity that I recommended in Polemical Judo. Repetitive simplicity that is the tactic that the Foxites perfected! As when all GOPpers repeat the same party line all together - like KGB metronomes - all on the same morning.

And hence...

2. ... and hence, here is a litany of hypocrisy and poor memory that is capsulated enough to be shouted!   

These are challenges that might reach a few of your getting-nervous uncles. especially as a combined list! 

Ten years ago, Donald Trump promised proof that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. 

“Soon! The case is water-tight and ready. I'll present it next week!”  The same promise got repeated, week after week, month after month. And sure, his dittohead followers relished not facts, but the hate mantra, so they never kept track...

Also ten years ago Beck and Hannity etc. declared "George Soros personally toppled eight foreign governments!" (Actually, it's sort of true!) They promised to list those eight Soros-toppled victims! Only they never did. Because providing that list would have left Fox a smoldering ruin.

Nine years ago, running against H Clinton, Donald Trump declared I will build a Big Beautiful WALL!" From sea to shining sea. 

Funny how he never asked his GOP-run Congress, later, for the money. And he still hasn't. Clinton and Obama each built more fences & surveillance systems to control the border than Trump ever did.

Also nine years ago,"You’ll never see me on a golf course, I’ll be working so hard for you!”  Um...

Eight years ago - after inauguration and taking over the US government, he vowed: “Within weeks the indictments will roll in a great big wave. You’ll see the Obama Administration was the most corrupt ever!”  

(Real world: there were zero indictments of the most honest and least blemished national administration in all of human history. Bar none. In fact, grand juries - consisting mostly of white retirees in red states - have indicted FORTY TIMES as many high Republicans as Democrats. Care to offer wager stakes?)

Also eight years ago, his 1st foreign guests in the White House - Lavrov and Kisliak, giggled with him ecstatically (see below), thinking their KGB tricks had captured the USA. Alas for Putin's lads, it took them 8 more years.

Seven years ago, ol’ Two Scoops promised a “terrific health care bill for everyone!” to replace ‘horrible Obamacare!’  And repeatedly for the next six years he declared “You’ll see it in two weeks!” And then... in 2 weeks. And then... in 2 weeks. And then in 2 weeks… twenty... fifty more times.

Also seven years ago, "Kim Jong Un and I fell in love!" (see above).

Six years ago, Fox “News” declared in court “we don’t do news, we are an entertainment company,” in order to writhe free of liability and perjury for oceans of lies. And still Fox had to pay $150 millions.

Five years ago Trump’s son-in-law was “about to seal the deal on full peace in the Middle East!”

Four years ago, Don promised “Absolute proof the election was stolen by Biden and the dems!" 

Howl after howl by Foxite shills ensued, and yet, not one scintilla of credible evidence was ever presented. While blowhards and blockheads fulminated into secessionist fury, all courts – including many GOP appointed judges - dismissed every 'case' as ludicrous, and several of them fined Trumpist shriekers for frivolous lying. Oh, the screeches and spumes! But not…one…shred of actual evidence. Ever. 

Three years ago, three different GOP Congressmen alluded-to or spoke-of how sex orgies are rife among top DC Republicans. And two of them alluded to resulting blackmail. 

Trump demanded “release the Epstein Files!”... then filed every lawsuit that his lawyers could concoct, in order to prevent it. And to protect an ocean of NDAs. 

Oh, and he promised “Great revelations!” on UFOs and the JFK assassination, just as soon as he got back in office. Remember that? Disappointed, a little? And Epstein's pal is still protected.

Two years ago, Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney and even Mitch McConnell were hinting at a major push to reclaim the Republican Party - or at least a vestigially non-traitor part of it - from the precipice where fanaticism and blackmail and treason had taken it. 

If necessary - (it was said) - they would form a new, Real Rebublican Party, where a minority of decent adults remaining in the GOP 'establishment' might find refuge and begin rebuilding. 

Only it seems that crown prince Ryan & co. chickened out, as he always has... RACO.

One year ago... actually less... the Economist offered this cover plus detailed stats, showing what always happens. That by the end of every Democratic administration, most things - certainly the economy and yes, deficits - are better. And they always get worse across the span of GOP admins. Care to bet this time?

   Alas, now the bitterly laughingstock of the world, deliberately immolating the universities and science and professions that truly Made America Great. 

There's your year-by year Top Ten Hypocricies countdown. And it's worth a try, to see if hammering the same things over and over - which worked so well for the Foxites might be worth a try?

            Oh, sure. Those aren’t my paramount complaints against Putin’s lackey and his shills. 

My main gripe is the one thing that unites them all -- Trump’s oligarchs with foreign enemies and with MAGA groundlings. 

 That one goal? Shared hatred of every single fact using profession, from science and civil service to the FBI/intel/military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on Terror…

... the very ones standing between YOU and a return to feudal darkness.*

These reminder samplers of promises never kept are still valid. They could be effective if packaged properly, And will someone please show me who – in this wilderness – is pointing at them?

== Final lagniappe... a reminder of the most-loathesome of all... ==

* And yeah... here again in the news is the would-be Machiavelli/Wormtongue who flatter-strokes the ingrate, would-be lords who are seeking to betray the one renaissance that gave them everything they have.

Okay, I was planning to finish with a riff (again) on teleologies or notions of TIME. Very different notions that are clutched by the far-left, by today's entire right, and by the beleaguered liberal/middle.

But anon. Another time.