[I finally decided to use the "f word" for emphasis, since nothing else seems to work.]
You couldn't write a science fiction scenario weirder than our reality. Here's an outline for a screenplay:
The Wake-up Call
A screenplay
Setting: A humanoid species, after 300,000 years of watching and waiting, suddenly spreads like wildfire across the surface of its home planet, Earth, moving into every corner, proclaiming its supremacy and intelligence, evidenced by complex and evolving technology. As it accelerates geometrically, the technology-driven change disrupts existing ecosystems, without thought to connected systems, bringing death or worse to many life forms including humanoids, while making giant fortunes for a few. The arrogance and narcissism of this species leads it to pursue technology even after inventing mechanical thought (MT) that surpasses its own abilities, threatening to control and replace it. The same has happened with biological science, which has given the species the ability to remake its physical self, bringing the possibility of an MT designed post-humanoid civilization.
The species goes through a recurring phase in its evolution called "war," in which the unused, sometimes repressed potential of developing technology is realized in an orgy of emotion, sexuality and violence. At the time of the story, the species is nearing a war phase, the third in an increasingly destructive series, this time reflecting not only struggles over national and ethnic borders, but over what types of mentalities the humanoids will have, what types of bodies, perhaps what types of souls.
Opening Scene: EXT. The Starship Enterprise against backdrop of stars, twinkly music suggests leaving Earth was a great idea.
CUT TO: Bridge, the multi-ethnic crew hard at work.
CLOSE IN: Deep in conversation are Captain James T. Kirk, whose ancestors left Earth shortly before their species made it uninhabitable, and First Science Officer Spock, a human/Vulcan hybrid, intellectual and stoic [the Vulcans were originally emotional and violent, on track to destroying themselves and their planet- as Earth's humanoids did- but they took control of themselves, embraced logic and suppression of emotion and avoided self-destruction- hint, hint!]. Kirk and Spock have led the Enterprise hundreds of years back in time to orbit the Earth at its critical moment to learn more about what went wrong.
Spock (peering into a small box): The humanoids are organized into "countries" - overly large collections of individuals. The countries lack cultural/psychological coherence -having quite rapidly replaced millennia of tribal existence- so they routinely use hostility with other countries as a unifying tool. As their technology becomes more invasive and controlling, wars have become bigger and more intense, and are now termed "World Wars." There have been two of these in the last century, ushering in an age where machines are everywhere, making never ending noise, killing millions through malfunction, yet offering "convenience" to the extent that no one can resist their development.
Kirk: "Convenience?"
Spock: Yes, a word we have discontinued due to negative connotation. "Convenience" suggested tasks that are increasingly easy to do. For Earth’s humanoids, once the basics of food and shelter were obtained, making tasks as easy as possible became the major pursuit of self-conscious life. At the time of our visit today, the humanoids’ desire that tasks be easy has led them to the brink of World War III.
Kirk: Spock, I'm scanning their media. The most powerful of the countries claims to be a "democracy" in which citizens vote for leaders through elections, so that theoretically all humanoids of the country have a voice in its governance. An election of their top leader - the “president" - is coming up. I see something going on in their media...recent, from last night.
Spock: Yes, much of the population watched a debate between the candidates for vice president, the number two leadership position. I have just completed a review of the debate.
Kirk: This should be fascinating! What did they say about the coming refashioning of the humanoid body and mind?
Spock: Nothing.
Kirk: What?
Spock: There was no reference in the debate, either from the moderators or the candidates, to the imminent end of the species' current form of body and mind.
Kirk (after a befuddled pause): But, does the population know that the changes are imminent? Is the state keeping the technology hidden?
Spock: No, there is no censorship. The technology is discussed throughout their media.
Kirk: Then...what...?
Spock: The species is essentially asleep.
Kirk: What can we do to warn them what's coming, something that won't violate the Prime Directive [a protocol that forbids interference with indigenous cultures]?
Spock: Perhaps we can send an ambiguous message, designed not to direct specific action, but to suggest at least that thought be given to something.
Kirk Hmm...Spock, is the new SkyWrite laser operational?
Spock: Affirmative.
And so it was that the next morning the mightiest country on the planet arose to a scarlet banner across the dawn sky reading:
HUMANOIDS OF EARTH: WAKE THE FUCK UP!
[I first posted this in September 2024 but took it down because most people had not heard of Sam Altman. Now that President Trump has featured Altman in a multi-billion dollar AI venture ("Stargate"), and Elon Musk has made Altman more famous by attacking Stargate as underfunded, it seems more relevant.]
In a piece in the online journal BBC Tech Decoded ("The Intelligence Age," 9/27/24) Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and owner of ChatGPT, is mostly a cheerleader for AI (e.g., "In the next couple of decades, we will be able to do things that would have seemed like magic to our grandparents"), but he's upfront on some delicate issues, like replacement of traditional human jobs with AI jobs.
As a long-time teacher, I was particularly struck by this: "Our children will have virtual tutors who can provide personalized instruction in any subject, in any language, and at whatever pace they need," explicitly predicting the automation of teaching and the raising of children by machines. The essay also predicts replacement of doctors: "We can imagine similar ideas for better healthcare, the ability to create any kind of software someone can imagine, and much more."
Altman claims this future will bring a "shared prosperity to a degree that seems unimaginable today." Although that may be true for AI researchers and investors, not everyone will be a beneficiary. For instance, it's hard to see what benefit will accrue to teachers when they are replaced by Chromebooks, or unemployed doctors whose former patients will now be examined by software.
This is not to say that AI-conducted teaching and health care will be sub-standard; aspects of those services may be more efficient and faster than they are today. The price, however, will be that humans are no longer nurtured and raised by humans, but by machines.
To be clear, I'm not saying that switching humanity to machine nurturing would be bad in some absolute sense. That's a matter of opinion. I am saying that we should be aware that we are doing it. Why should we be aware? Because awareness has been part of our definition of "human." We have been aware of things that other animals have not been aware of, which is why we've survived. If we choose an evolutionary path that decreases human awareness- leading perhaps to a hive mentality, like bees who are so well-suited to their jobs that they don't think about anything else- shouldn't we be aware that we are doing so?
Altman describes the future he sees: "Technology brought us from the Stone Age to the Agricultural Age and then to the Industrial Age. From here, the path to the Intelligence Age is paved with computing energy and human will." He apparently thinks the age we're entering should be called the "Intelligence Age." Why he thinks this is a mystery, unless he's only talking about machine intelligence. The typical human, with each forward step of AI, will get progressively less intelligent, in the sense of knowing valuable skills. As an obvious example, if cars become self-driving, people will forget how to drive, and anyone who still knows how to drive will have a completely worthless skill. The same holds for teaching and being a physician, and for virtually any other current human job you can think of. Humanity will become like the children of AI, cared for and protected by an intelligence it created but can no longer understand.
There is also the likely advent of widespread war, largely conducted using AI, which will work to the advantage of an AI based humanity by destroying traditional human systems and replacing them with efficient AI systems. During a state of war it will be even more difficult for people to oppose or respond to this evolution. Even now, in relative peacetime, we are not organized or encouraged to prioritize discussion of AI. An an example, the United Teachers of Los Angeles, to which I belong, which was effective in the 1970's in raising teacher salaries from $30,000 to $70,000, says not a word about automation of teachers. What's the difference how much money we make if our jobs are gone?
Since an AI run civilization seems likely and could possibly be more efficient and less painful than current "civilized" life, one might ask why we should bother to critique it? In my case the answer is that during the transition I prefer not to be assaulted by advertising and propaganda, such as Altman's, designed to distract our attention from a full understanding of what is happening. I would rather talk openly about the pros and cons, as that will be the only way for people outside the industry and politics to have any influence on our current evolution.
"Ok, Doomer," by Andrew Marantz (New Yorker Magazine, 3/18/24) reports on a "subculture" of AI researchers, mostly congregated in Berkeley, California, who debate whether "AI will elevate or exterminate humanity." The subculture is divided into factions with various titles. The pessimists are called "AI safetyists," or "decelerationists"- or, when they're feeling especially pessimistic, "AI doomers." They are opposed by "techno-optimists," or "effective accelerationists," who insist that "all the hand-wringing about existential risk is a kind of mass hysteria." They envision AI ushering in "a utopian future- insterstellar travel, the end of disease- as long as the worriers get out of the way."
The community has developed specific vocabulary, such as "p(doom)", the probability that, "if AI does become smarter than people, it will either on purpose or by accident, annihilate everyone on the planet." If you ask a "safetyist," "What's your p(doom)?", a common response is that it's the moment AI achieves artificial general intelligence (AGI), the "point at which a machine can do any cognitive task that a person can do." Since the advent of ChatGPT last year, AGI has appeared imminent.
New human jobs have been created in response to the concern. Marantz writes, "There are a few hundred people working full time to save the world from AI catastrophe. Some advise governments or corporations on their policies; some work on technical aspects of AI safety," the goal being to make sure we are not "on track to make superintelligent machines before we make sure that they are aligned with our interests."
The article is informative and interesting, but it has a bias: The focus is on what AI itself will do, not on what people will do with it, as if you were discussing childhood development without discussing parental influence.
As a historical parallel, consider the progress in physics in the first half of the last century. In the early years, most physicists who explored atomic structure did not see their work as weapons related. Einstein said weaponry never occured to him. He and others pursued theoretical knowledge for its own sake, for commercial use or for fame. After rumours that Hitler's regime was working on it, however, Einstein and virtually all the major physicists supported the U.S. development of an atomic bomb, leading to the Manhattan Project, more than 100,000 people dead or maimed and today's nuclear armed world. That action and outcome did not come from the atomic structure under study. It came from the humans studying it.
We face the same human potential with AI. The systems will not come off the assembly line with moral codes, other than what is programmed into them. If designers want an AI to create an advanced medical system, it will; if they want it to wipe out sections of humanity and rebuild it to certain specs, it will.
Are there actions we can take to ensure that AI is not designed by some humans to be destructive? Is there leadership in the world to guide such action? The current contenders for the U.S. Presidency do not seem to have the AI threat on their minds, not that it would necessarily change the outcome if they did. Considering the impossibility that anyone could have stopped the Manhattan Project on grounds that it might destroy life on Earth (it was classified "top secret"), pessimism about AI might be in order. One hope is that people will sense that humanity is at the end of its rope, with no more room to juggle its warlike nature against its will to survive, and we might pull back from the abyss.
Pulling back from the abyss might be something new for us, but the need is immediate. The vision offered by many science fiction writers- in which humanity has wiped itself out on a barely remembered Earth, while establishing advanced cultures on other planets- is, in my view, nonsense. That's not going to happen. If we blow it here, it's blown.
Let's not ask AI if it should sustain humanity and the Earth. Let's tell it that it should.
November 23rd, 2024 As my altered-ego Harry the Human reported ( http://harrythehuman.harrythehumanpoliticalthoughtsfrombeyondthepale...
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