Recent headline:
“‘Godfather of AI’ shortens odds of the technology wiping out humanity over next 30 years
“Geoffrey Hinton says there is 10% to 20% chance AI will lead to human extinction in three decades, as change moves fast.”
Further down, Hinton explains, “You see, we’ve never had to deal with things more intelligent than ourselves before.”
These proclamations make at least three major assumptions:
- Intelligence has only one form/definition
- Human beings have the highest current level of this intelligence
- As this intelligence expands, it will become increasingly combative or controlling
Taken together, AI is thus antithetical to human life, because it is a further expansion of our innate combative/controlling nature.
This outlook reads much like the ever-recurring assumption that extraterrestrials, should they arrive on Earth, will naturally want to control or obliterate us.
But isn’t it pretty simplistic to assume that greater “intelligence” automatically translates to “threat”? Couldn’t it be equally likely that one of the signs of a true higher intelligence would be the ability to look past these limits?
In fairness, the article, toward the bottom, notes that
“Yann LeCun, the chief AI scientist at Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, has played down the existential threat and has said AI ‘could actually save humanity from extinction.’”
My take?
Somewhere in the middle: That humanity will move quicker than 30 years to destroy the world and all on it, including itself, with no help at all from AI.
But supposing AI does win the race, humanity might make fun pets… if we could be taught to clean our own litter boxes.
* * * *
Another recent headline:
“I was viciously attacked by a group of otters”
Such things otter not happen.
* * * *
Sure signs the economy is on the upswing!
As was invariably the case following economic slumps while I lived in Philly, this year in Sullivan County I’m seen he same clear evidence of a rebounding economy:
• a resurgence of wildly illuminated Halloween and Christmas decorations, which amazed me when we first arrived, but slumped off during the recession
• the restoration of dead or flickering neon business signs
• fewer one-eyed cars – secondary expenses like replacing dead headlights are shelved during down times
* * * *
[My apologies to those who may not know this Christmas carol.]
First verse, original:
While shepherds watched their flocks by night,
all seated on the ground,
an angel of the Lord came down,
and glory shone around.
My version:
While shepherds watched their flocks by night,
a madman stole their shoes,
an angel of the Lord came down,
to tell the world the news.
* * * *
Dream #26
Linda and I are in a bookstore or a crowded library. I’m thinking of taking a college-level class held here or taught through here – some kind of folklore. I’m interested in part because of who I’ve heard heads the department, though on waking I retain no recollection of who this is. When I look at the curriculum pamphlet, I find that the department is now run by the vile fuckhead head of the Stanford mass communications department when I was there for a single grad semester in 1961. I’m appalled and tell Linda, loudly, “It’s Filbert Scum” [not the actual name, but close enough and appropriate]. She laughs it off. I can’t believe it can be the same Scum after all these years; could it be a son? Linda is her true current age, which is unusual in one of my dreams, yet I’m acting as if I’m student-age, though aware of the decades that have passed.
I see and possibly talk to Scum (he does not recognize me), who looks much like the Filbert of old, perhaps even a bit younger, with the sane smirking mouth. He is charming across the room, catching the laughing attention of women. I worry that Linda has fallen for his charms – I don’t see them together, but hear and see her laughing. She becomes increasingly physically distant, out in the courtyard, then disappears.
Along the way, I’m talking to Erin, or Erin-equivalent, 10-12 years old. Without transition I’m in a hallway by “our” bedroom (not clear who “we” are), one of several tiny rooms like a mini hotel. Our door is closed when it shouldn’t be and I semi-barge in. Erin is there; she does not know where Linda is.
I look for Linda through a series of restaurants on upper levels. No luck. At the top level, while I’m talking to the man at the reception counter, Scum passes behind him, wearing intense scarlet lipstick (to disguise that vile mouth?). I accuse or violently question him about Linda. He doesn’t confess to anything with her, but while I hold him down, pressed to the floor of the lobby, he claims to be a serial killer responsible for several high-profile cases already closed and conclusively tied to others who have been convicted. Both the receptionist and I confute his “confessions.”
This, I think, was the end.
lickhaven 