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.
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...
212 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 212 of 212Well the Iranians just closed the strait of Hormuz through which passes 1/4 of the world's oil..
But don't worry Trump is in charge
Yet I'm glad I topped off my tank this morning.
Just like my scenario.
The irony here being: The regime of Iran actually went to the parliament to get a mandate, while Trump did not.
Aaaaaaand it's started. No 'two weeks' that dumb asses mocked him for.
And some small or maybe even not-small part of the blame falls on idiots screaming "TACO!" at a craven coward, egging him NOT to 'chicken out' the next time.
Liberals may be far better morally and in matters of governance and loyalty to science and facts and our Great Experiment... as well as living by the Sermon on the Mount... but POLEMICALLY they remain spasmodically reflexive dunces.
Tho this sure makes my coming posting even more redolent.
They've been trying to close the Red Sea by arming the Houthi's. Been going on for months. They've fired several times on the US Navy trying to shoot down planes and sink ships. Not just pip-squeak weapons either. The real stuff.
Personally, I wish Biden had struck back... but I get why he didn't. Proxy wars are like that. Still... it is important to know that we've been IN a proxy war with Iran for a while now. This recent round is an escalation that delivers the damage unto them as well.
The mullahs are a little harder to reach. Better protection by mountains.
What they want is a potent external enemy. That shores up support at home. Too many factions to keep in line otherwise.
It depends on what your political goals are.
Accelerationists of any shade might open crates of champaign, now.
Celt's overview of past failed empires that collapsed because of mass idiocy - (or perhaps an alien stoopid-ray; we're coming for you bastards!) - is a solid contribution that (unlike even a single opposite-to-fact assertion made by the ent) is based in reality. Though not perfectly. And in many ways harmfully. Take this downer missive that he quoted:
Chris Hedges' jeremiad "Reign of Idiots". https://www.truthdig.com/articles/reign-of-idiots/. "The idiots take over in the final days of crumbling civilizations. Idiot generals wage endless, unwinnable wars that bankrupt the nation. Idiot economists call for reducing taxes for the rich and cutting social service programs for the poor, and project economic growth on the basis of myth. Idiot industrialists poison the water, the soil and the air, slash jobs and depress wages. Idiot bankers gamble on self-created financial bubbles and impose crippling debt peonage on the citizens. Idiot journalists and public intellectuals pretend despotism is democracy. Idiot intelligence operatives orchestrate the overthrow of foreign governments to create lawless enclaves that give rise to enraged fanatics. Idiot professors, “experts” and “specialists” busy themselves with unintelligible jargon and arcane theory that buttresses the policies of the rulers. Idiot entertainers and producers create lurid spectacles of sex, gore and fantasy. There is a familiar checklist for extinction. We are ticking off every item on it."
Did you enjoy reading that? Shaking your head in sad resignation over the inevitable stoopidity of your fellow citizens? Did it occur to you that's what our enemies want from you? Scan to the bottom for my angry (channeling U.S. Grant) response!
But first a couple of nitpicks:
1. Hitler DID take advantage of the mesmerizing power of new technologies - radio & loudspeakers & newsreel spectacle. I show elsewhere how each new tech revolution in human VISION, MEMORY and ATTENTION - starting with the printing press - begins with dire outcomes and misuse by hypnotists. (Though in the 1930s and 40s English speaking nations, the media magicians who captivated audiences happened - fortunately - to be on our side.)
2. Talk of 'immiseration' of the lower middle class is misleading. Yes, it happened in 1930s Germany, helping propel Nazism. But that bears no relevance to the rightward swing of US lumpenprols. Over 90% + of current MAGAs have zero practical 'immiseration.' Things were going great under Biden. And whenever you demand manly $$$ WAGERS over actual metrics, the raving Fox-shills flee in panic.
I have many times shown that MAGA alienation and hatred of modernity and fact professions is mostly a longstanding CULTURAL grudge against modernity going back two centuries. It's THE core chasm in the American psyche. But lately it's been exacerbated by a genuine grievance. A resentment that - every single year - modernist America steals their best and brightest children. Luring them to bright lights and universities and filling their heads with facts and reason until they come home - if ever - as changelings.
3. The current wave of confederate treason could be reversed if a critical mass of respected Republicans were to step up in unison, perhaps organized by Bush/Romney/Thune/Collins/Murkowski and the former crown-prince Paul Ryan. That those cowards haven't done so testifies to a level of craven betrayal that cannot be explained by tradition or ideology or fear of being 'primaried.'
Only two things could do this - death threats or blackmail. And either of those could evaporate, if half a dozen of the threatened were to step up, together, and rip off the shadows... and be seen as heroes forever, despite whatever now has them afraid.
I've urged contacts to look especially at male relatives of Murkowski and Collins. I'd stake half my savings that you'll find a Hunter or even a Diddy, cowering in that periphery.
continues
4. But now, back to that dyspeptic jeremiad by Chris Hedges, quoted above. Which perfectly illustrates why the gloomists on our Union side of Civil War Phase 8 are not helping!
"The idiots take over in the final days of crumbling civilizations.... There is a familiar checklist for extinction. We are ticking off every item on it."
Feh! And get bent, you perfect example of idiocy, with your counterproductive screeching!
Never before in all of history has a nation had greater numbers - or a higher percentages - of wise and smart and knowing people. And not just at the maligned universities, or in the under-attack civil service, or our brilliant (but under-seige) officer corps, or in the streets. We have more (and higher percentage) brilliant/wise folks than ALL other nations and societies across all of time... COMBINED!
Indeed, assailing and curbing and demoralizing all the smart people IS the shared goal of both MAGA lumpenprols and the world oligarchy. Proving THEY are idiots because it simply cannot succeed. What? your plan is to intimidate and crush the hundred million smartest in society? The ones who know cyber, nano, nuclear, bio and all the rest? That's your plan?
And yet, dopes like Chris Hedges yowl that it is working. It has to work. because you are all fooooools!
I am reminded of a different phase of the recurring American Civil War, when (like today) the Union side needed... and then got... better generals. A moment, after the Battle of the Wilderness, when U.S. Grant heard his underlings whining about "What's Bobby Lee going to do to us next?"
Grant stood up and growled:
"STOP fretting about what Bobby Lee is gonna do to us. Start planning what WE are going to do to Bobby Lee!"
There are a jillion fresh tactics we can use... e.g. getting all the dems in GOP districts to re-register as Republicans, in order to truly screw up the radicals' Radicalization-via-Primary tactic. But in order to get started, we need to first stand up like confident women and men and reject idiocies like this "Reign of Idiots" bullshit whine.
Sure, it contains some truths.
But it could not have been better written by a Kremlin basement Goebbels, seeking to demoralize us.
And fuck that, you unwitting (or possibly witting) tool of monsters.
The "attack on smart people" is SOP for fascism. It is one of the defining characteristics of a fascist movement.
David never uses the political term that describes our current moment perfectly. The GOP are fascists engaged in a fascist takeover of our democracy.
Why does David not use the term fascist? He has written on this subject for 30+ years yet he refuses to use the correct political term for the governing GOP.
I believe his refusal to use the correct term is because he is still trying to convince some of the GOP to defect, a suckers bet if there ever was one.
It is not possible to convince a fascist to not be a fascist.
The only way to victory over fascists is to utterly strip away their power.
Centrists like David do not understand this. They prefer to negotiate, cajole, and prevaricate in order to appeal to both sides.
You cannot appeal to fascists to be less fascist. They are extremists, and do not use logic, only emotions like hate and envy.
The generations before the Boomers understood fascism. However, they failed to teach their children the Boomers how to fight it and recognize it though, leading to centrist betrayal after betrayal in the last 50 years.
We would not be where we are right now without decades of centrists denying that the GOP became harshly fascist long before Trump. It is the old "moderate" GOP and conservative Dems that carry the blame for enabling the rise of the fascist GOP to ultimate power.
onward
onward
I'm sure the Iranians will greet us as liberators.
Idiot. Fascists! Happy? Fascism is PART of what they do and not the core thing. Yeah yeah fine... maybe 15% of MAGAs are actual fascists but the rest of goppers share guilt and complicity for putting up with it.
Happy?
Of course not, you typical sanctimony-junky-bully, insisting that ONLY YOUR symbolisms matter. Onhly your vocabulary. Attacking allies for not primly abiding by your exact incantations..,.
...which is EXACTLY. what drove 2 million Blacks and Hispanics and working whites out of our coalition when we needed them most.
Yeah, fascism is there as part of the enemy psyche.
But you are the unwitting imbecillic Fifth Column letting the fascists in.
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