Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Start with interesting scientific paper which explores the dynamics of mass extinction, and weave it into a climate horror story full of scary robots, climate catastrophe and the end of mankind.
According to the Washington Post;
The strange link between global climate change and the rise of the robots
We’ve already heard of all the nasty consequences that could occur if the pace of global climate change doesn’t abate by the year 2050 — we could see wars over water, massive food scarcity, and the extinction of once populous species. Now add to the mix a potentially new wrinkle on the abrupt and irreversible changes – superintelligent robots would be just about ready to take over from humanity in the event of any mass extinction event impacting the planet.
In fact, according to a mind-blowing research paper published in mid-August by computer science researchers Joel Lehman and Risto Miikkulainen, robots would quickly evolve in the event of any mass extinction (defined as the loss of at least 75 percent of the species on the planet), something that’s already happened five times before in the past.
In a survival of the fittest contest in which humans and robots start at zero (which is what we’re really talking about with a mass extinction event), robots would win every time. That’s because humans evolve linearly, while superintelligent robots would evolve exponentially. Simple math.
…
As the Washington Post admits, “mind blowing paper” does not mention climate change or global warming, and is not even really about robots. The paper is a fascinating attempt to use evolutionary computer models, based on the NEAT system developed by my favourite AI researcher Ken Stanley, to explore what happens when a “mass extinction event” abruptly empties a lot of ecological niches. The conclusion, unsurprisingly, is evolution goes into overdrive – the empty ecological niches are rapidly filled by new species.
The abstract of the paper;
Extinction events impact the trajectory of biological evolution significantly. They are often viewed as upheavals to the evolutionary process. In contrast, this paper supports the hypothesis that although they are unpredictably destructive, extinction events may in the long term accelerate evolution by increasing evolvability. In particular, if extinction events extinguish indiscriminately many ways of life, indirectly they may select for the ability to expand rapidly through vacated niches. Lineages with such an ability are more likely to persist through multiple extinctions. Lending computational support for this hypothesis, this paper shows how increased evolvability will result from simulated extinction events in two computational models of evolved behavior. The conclusion is that although they are destructive in the short term, extinction events may make evolution more prolific in the long term.
Read more: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0132886
The Washington Post article is an interesting read, but in a sense it misses its target. The article tries to weave climate fear into the rise of the robots narrative, but in my opinion ends up just being a robot story. Unconstrained artificial intelligence is scary, in a way warm weather can never be. I believe, as Dr. Stephen Hawking once warned, that an artificial intelligence disaster really could cause the extinction of mankind. Robots don’t have our sense of right and wrong. If you told a human level robot intelligence to maximise shareholder profits, you would have to be very careful to remember, to instruct the robot about what it couldn’t do, about limits to behaviour which most humans take for granted. For example, the corporate profit robot would have to be explicitly told, that assassinating surplus employees is not an acceptable way to minimise employee contract termination and redundancy payments. Sooner or later someone whose job is to instruct the robots, will forget to tell a robot something important.
I suspect anyone who reads to the end of the Washington Post article, or this post, is thinking far more about robots, than about climate change.
I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.
;->
+1.618
+42
You meant “protectors”.
The robot in the picture has an expression which suggests it is thinking: “Agh! Fans of Al Gore. Crush! Kill! Destroy!”
Danger, danger, Will Robinson!
Indeed!
“Klaatu barada nikto”
Having suffered the slings and arrows of outrageously trying to imbue ferromagnetic and then silicon life forms with intelligence, and in the latter case I’m not talking about the wife’s twin birthday enhancements, the poor thingies are a long way off ruling anything.
Having crashed and burned on procedure rules, neural networks and finally generationally selective genetic algorithms, I wouldn’t trust one of them to navigate across a road safely.
Would anyone like to write the schematic logic for that simple problem? I’ll have fun pointing out the flaws but knock yourself out anyway.
Pointman
Yet my old Commodore 64, and its 12Kb chess game, used to kick my butt 9 times out of 10… 🙂
If only we could embed the logic of the Commodore 64 into the mind of a liberal !!
Are “Humans” just around the corner:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4122068/
So you’re cr*p at chess?
One: Why did the chicken cross the road?
Other: Uh, I dunno, why?
One: To get the Chinese newspaper. Do you get it?
Other: Ummm, no.
One: Neither do I. Neither does he. That’s why he crossed the road.
================
Chess is easy. Try teaching a computer to play Euchre. Or worse, Bridge. >_<
Sod it, I’ll kick off the programming disaster. I’ll wing the syntax, and if you think that’s something the vice squad should be taking a serious interest in, just sit back and enjoy the fun.
1. Advance to edge of pavement (that definition bug is easy, so no brownies for spotting it).
5. Do until loop01 (It’s safe to cross) {
10. Look left.
20. If you can see a car, generate reasonable random wait and go back to start of loop01, otherwise proceed to stmt 30.
30. Look right.
40. If you can see a car, generate reasonable random wait and go back to start of loop01, otherwise by default proceed to stmt 50.
50. Break out of loop01
60. } end of do until loop01
70. Cross the road.
80. Yay, I’m a happy robot to make it across the road alive.
90. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvnHgKkNKR4
It doesn’t look good without indents but WTF. Gowon, spot a few bugs/drop offs.
Pointman
BTW. recode the whole thing with your bug fix included.
Pointman
September 10, 2015 at 9:53 am
Poitman, I think you miss the point……:-)
it is about the “why” not “how”..
Can “free will” be coded or programmed?!
“generate reasonable random wait and go back to start of loop01” The word reasonable is not quantifiable.
This algorithm would fail with “if you see a car” as a car may be parked up the road making the “super-intelligent” robot wait indefinitely.
Quick coding of it: http://sciencejots.com/?p=1096
You need to figure out the distance and speed of any car approaching in order to figure out how long before the car reaches your location. (That also takes care of cars with zero speed. IE parked.)
kim
September 10, 2015 at 10:24 am.
Are you (or were you) the One or the Other, or the “chicken he” perhaps? 🙂
cheers
Tell that to Google. They seem to think their robot car can navigate along the road very safely. They seem to have sold our politicos on it too.
“I wouldn’t trust one of them to navigate across a road safely. ”
Let alone drive me to the shops. Yes, Google, I do mean you.
Talk about insanity !!! The liberal left has lost all logic and reasoning in their pathetic attempt to control Humanity !! Thank God for the voice of reason from WTF , err , I mean WUWT !! LOL…
I remember hearing in the late sixties; “today’s science fiction is tomorrow’s science”. It seems to me that yesterday’s science fiction is still science fiction but people have come to believe in it and wish it true.
Am I way off thinking that TV sci-fi is the most science education the average green believer can claim?
“Spock! Activate the Genesis Device!
There’s yer “mass-extinction model”, kids.
Dawtgtomis September 10, 2015 at 9:14 am
There are a lot of us still waiting for those flying cars in our garages, dawtgtomis. Sometimes, tomorrow never comes.
“There are a lot of us still waiting for those flying cars …”
I’m happy driving against idiot with only 2 degrees of freedom. Imagine the mess they would cause trying to text with Z axis ability. Consider us lucky we’re still waiting.
I’m still waiting for those silver unitards.
Yes, while the millions of lawyers circle other targets on the active list.
@Paul
The Jetsons never had any traffic problems with flying cars. Oh wait… that was a cartoon. Seemed real enough to me back then, though.
.
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@Brian
“I’m still waiting for those silver unitards.”
Dang! Made me laugh and now people are looking at me. I’m not sure I’m ready for those, Brian.
.
.
@Lady Gaiagaia
Strewth, in many cases. *sigh*
We have enough tards already.
today’s good thoughtful science fiction is tomorrows technology. Communication satellites? Robots?
And of course ‘1984’ became reality about 2004…
I’m just waiting for the Weapon Shops of Isher…
Today climate science has become science fiction.
Hmm.. my reply didn’t come out where expected, Lady G. I’m another victim of WordPress.
WordPress is probably a robot.
Could robotic leaders be any worse than this impending calamity?
http://www.politico.eu/article/quasi-communist-corbyn-uk-labour-blair-miliband-burnham-cooper-election/
The Commie brother of meteorologist Piers looks as if Labour really want to be taken to their Leader.
It’s funny reading some of the science fiction from the 50’s and 60’s. Universally they missed the miniaturization of electronics and especially computers. Ray guns and flying cars, but people still have to do calculations with paper and pen because the calculator was never invented.
In Rocket Ship Galileo, they programmed the ships course into a cam.
Maybe Dr. Who was real, phone booths keep disappearing from everywhere!
😉
Finally, something with more probability than all their fantasies.
You know, I’d be a lot more impressed with *all* the worries about robots if there *were* any robots, or any clue how real, autonomous, Isaac-Asimov-CDR-Data robots might be built.
I consider anyone that voted for Oblama TWICE to be brain dead !! Would ROBOT be a kinder , gentler name ??
http://www1.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Tea+Party+Express+Launches+Nationwide+Bus+2n6HuPXqCIsl.jpg
ha ha Marcus,
fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me…
I don’t believe for one Nano second that he was voted in twice by the people, nope.
the big problem with robots is they’re only as intelligent as the designer/programmer. Now if that designer/programmer gives the robot lethal weapons, a flawed program and no off-switch they might get dangerous. OTOH it might just depend on what options you purchase with it – remember the Volvo self-driving car that ran down some pedestrians because it didn’t have the optional pedestrian-avoidance feature?
I’m comforted to know that after I’m gone, some robot will come in and finally set that blinking clock on my vcr. (and maybe unjam that Barry Manilow tape in my 8-track)
That raises an interesting point. Neural net computers have the potential to be far far more intelligent than their programmers.
For some quite scary values of ‘intelligence’
If you like, we are close to being able to program AIs to evolve very rapidly, rather than to do a fixed task.
Will there be fembots too, or will the Borg only assimilate Men?
(sarc factor seven Mr. Data)
From Dilbert last week:
http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-09-04
The global warming Faithful haven’t just JUMPED the shark. Now they’re doing backflips and cartwheels over it.
I just posted this at the Washington P
Well…..the alarmists do respond rather robotically….
I’ve long suspected that some of them are just poorly written response algorithms.
Remember, SkyNet became self-aware at 2:14 a.m., EDT, on August 29…
I’ve about had all I can take – do the CAGW get all their theses from the movies or do all the sci-fi disaster movies get their plots from the CAGW crowd? So far this week we’ve had “The Day After Tomorrow” and the horrible revised version of “The Day the Earth Stood Still” I suppose “Green Slime” will be coming out next followed by “Barbarella Against the Doom (aka The League of Carbon Offenders)”. No sarc.
I walk with Walker.
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And closer to home, the deadly melting permafrost: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/09/02/1510795112.abstract
To which I respond:
A (giant) virus, restricted to the permafrost, extinct everywhere but the permafrost, with an amoeba for a host. What’s the deal? And a global warming danger??
Here’s the deal. This is a double symbiotic virus–the amoeba needed it and the mammoths needed the amoeba to digest their food. They pooped out the virus all over Siberia, and when humans wiped them out the virus got wiped out too, except where preserved by freezing.
A human danger? Like moon and Mars microbes–you’ll recall NASA quarantined the Apollo 11 astronauts for fear of deadly moon life. Now if you go poking around more recent Arctic burials (from a century or two ago) you could very well expose a deadly disease now eradicated: smallpox. But prehistoric diseases? Dangerous to humans? Nomadic humans?
Epidemics by definition and diseases by nature are problems of civilization: that is, cities, people living in proximity. Contagion is a function of something like the square of population density. Genghis Khan and his hordes were exceptional, far roaming parasites on civilization who were capable of suffering on their own from the diseases they transported. But generally speaking, hunter-gatherers are free from communicable disease as long as civilized folk leave them alone. A long history of isolation meant the Americas and Pacific islands were nearly free of disease. Small groups hopping islands and coastlines are not able to breed and transport deadly pathogens across continents. But one or two sick sailors from Europe will have no trouble killing millions of Amerinds, and one or two Amerinds traveling back to Europe had no trouble introducing syphilis to the Old World in 1493.
So, “The fact that two different viruses retain their infectivity in prehistorical permafrost layers should be of concern in a context of global warming,” is the typically hopelessly naive nonsense we get from people who are ignorant enough to buy into the global warming hype. They don’t know squat.
–AGF
The Spanish Flu virus was recovered from bodies buried on Spitsbergen:
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/21/us/genetic-material-of-virus-from-1918-flu-is-found.html
Not quite. It seems the Spitsbergen mission was a failure–the best DNA strands came from warm South Carolina, with a little help from Alaska. –AGF
Hey , they’re obviously getting desperate !!
“We’ve already heard of all the nasty consequences that could occur if the pace of global climate change doesn’t abate by the year 2050”
What?
Once the SCOTUS allows C3 to marry R2, we’re toast.
It will start with an executive order effecting all government contractors first and will be added as another priority of the U.S. military to comply with.
Please. Climawarmabots are the big threat to humanity, not some fantasy sci-fi-inspired “super-intelligent” robots. Next they’ll be saying space aliens “could” take advantage of the coming manmade climatastrophe, and take over the planet, perhaps enslaving what’s left of mankind.
Robots run on electricity, which would require more fossil fuel energy sources, which would accelerate global warming, which will lead to more robots, which will require more electricity … oh my, oh my … does it ever end
“Help me Al Gore you’re our only hope”
“This is not the missing heat you’re looking for”.
Really happy, I have now got yet another totally improbable, unscientific prediction I can tell my few friends who believe this drivel, to make them realise it is alarmist claptrap. The others are; fish going deaf because the oceans are now acidic and the bones in their ears are dissolving, alien invasion before we wreck the galaxy after neglecting our own planet and my favourite, we will turn into a duplicate of Venus.
You could not make this stuff up!!
Even Stephen Hawkins has fallen for that “we might become another Venus” nonsense.
In a survival of the fittest contest in which humans and robots start at zero (which is what we’re really talking about with a mass extinction event), robots would win every time. That’s because humans evolve linearly, while superintelligent robots would evolve exponentially. Simple math.
Which explains why this reporter works for a dead tree publication and not for a science journal. Robots at “zero” don’t so much as turn on. A superintelligent robot without human help would be centuries extracting enough refined materials to duplicate a fraction of its functions.
Silly season reportage.
Remember Asimov’s three laws of robotics.
Asimov found a flaw in his own laws. The first law forces robots to take over, to prevent us from coming to harm through our own stupidity :-0
Can anybody imagine this:
A whole planet, exclusively populated by robots. Nothing else at all.
In addition, the robots were put there by an alien civilization. The robots are not even native.
This situation is incredible, even fantastic.
The planet is Mars.
Right. And now imagine how close we are to endowing those robots with the ability to find food for themselves and reproduce.