Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Now that Trump is President, what will replace the dying climate crisis narrative?
The replacement scare has to be a comparatively new field, with vast knowledge gaps which can be filled with wild speculation disguised as expert opinion. It must plausibly threaten the lives and security of ordinary people – to attract research funding. The exaggerated risks must have the potential to engage public imagination. The new scare must be radically different from previous scares – otherwise people will see it as recycled CO2 hype (think the methane scare). And the new scare must have the support of popular culture – Hollywood must get on board, to help spread the fear.
There is a crisis narrative which ticks all these boxes – the rising threat of uncontrolled artificial intelligence.
Hollywood is already well on board with the AI crisis. The following is a list of Hollywood films since year 2000 related to artificial intelligence (original source Wikipedia);
| Year | Count | Movies |
|---|---|---|
| 2001 | 1 | A.I. Artificial Intelligence |
| 2002 | 1 | S1M0NE |
| 2003 | 3 | The Matrix Reloaded, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, The Matrix Revolutions |
| 2004 | 1 | I, Robot |
| 2005 | 1 | The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy |
| 2007 | 1 | Transformers |
| 2008 | 3 | Eagle Eye, Iron Man, WALL-E |
| 2009 | 3 | Terminator Salvation, Moon, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen |
| 2011 | 2 | Real Steel, Transformers: Dark of the Moon |
| 2012 | 3 | Prometheus, Robot & Frank, Total Recall |
| 2013 | 4 | Her, Iron Man 3, The Machine, Pacific Rim |
| 2014 | 7 | Automata, Big Hero 6, Interstellar, Robocop (2014 film), Transcendence, Transformers: Age of Extinction, X-Men: Days of Future Past |
| 2015 | 8 | Ex Machina, Chappie, Tomorrowland, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Terminator Genisys, aka Terminator 5, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Uncanny, Psycho-pass: The Movie |
| 2016 | 3 | Max Steel, Morgan, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story |
| 2017 | 2 (so far) | Ghost in the Shell (2017 film), Transformers: The Last Knight |
It is difficult to gauge overall interest in AI. From the graph at the top of this article, the number of people entering two key AI related search terms is substantially down from a peak in 2004 (the earliest date Google provides search term data), but may again be on the rise.
The last month or so there appears to be a lot of press interest in AI – I’ve seen a lot of news articles recently which discuss the potential for artificial intelligence to impact the lives of ordinary people.
For example (just from the last few days);
How artificial intelligence can be corrupted to repress free speech
Big firms embrace artificial intelligence
Australia’s big businesses are embracing artificial intelligence (AI), with two-thirds planning to replace jobs…
Scientists advising the US military say fears of an AI existential threat are ‘uninformed’
Mulling the Economic Effect of Artificial Intelligence Many executives and economists said they believe the technology will end up creating more new jobs than it displaces …
Artificial Intelligence to Drive China VC Investments in 2017
There has been a lot of speculation that artificial intelligence might prevent President Trump from restoring middle class prosperity.
Commentary: Shift to automation may prevent Trump from delivering on his jobs promise
As the election results rolled in last night, it became increasingly clear that America — and the world — would never be the same. The American people overlooked all of Republican nominee Donald Trump’s faults and elected him to office in the belief that he will fix the nation’s deep-seated problems of inequity and injustice. And they rebelled against the business interests and corruption that they believed Hillary Clinton represented.
Trump’s victory was enabled by technology — everything from his use of social media to Clinton’s email scandals to Russian hacking. But advancements in technology and how they reshape our economy may also keep him from delivering on some of the major promises that made him so popular during the campaign season.
…
Read more http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-trump-biz-tech-automation-robots-jobs-20161109-story.html
Is artificial intelligence a real threat to security and prosperity? The beauty of speculating about such an unknown field is that nobody really knows. AI driven weapons might remove human conscience from the battlefield. Runaway AIs superseding their software constraints could wreak havoc, causing environmental catastrophe, maybe even completely destroying the world. Artificial intelligence threatens to permanently eliminate jobs, by raising the skills bar impossibly high, driving workers and the middle class into state dependency and financial ruin. But similar things have been said about almost every major historical technological advance – and have always turned out to be hype.
Artificial intelligence has good potential to frighten politicians into funding lots of expensive but inconclusive studies. Since strong AI doesn’t exist yet, all opinions about the future of artificial intelligence are highly speculative – which is why I am calling artificial intelligence as the next eco-scare, the true heir to the failed CO2 scare.
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Any threat needs to embed the following to be a long term source of speculation and funding:
– inadequate and inconclusive historical data
– ill understood natural processes
– potentially extreme consequences if expensive mitigation or avoidance not undertaken
My vote is for oceanographic threats/science. Covers pollution, ecosystems, sea level rise, underwater volcanic events, tectonic plate movements, etc. These can all be linked to impaired food sources, coastal erosion, tsunami, flooding and permanent inundation etc.
Terry:
Couched in the conditions you set, I think asteroid strikes are more useful. Not much historical data, wild speculation among experts, little scientific agreement, and potentially extreme consequences. Asteroids hands down (as a natural event).
The problem is you can’t blame anyone. Which very rich international group can be taxed for failing to mitigate the asteroid threat? Will we try to haul out ancient corporate memos showing Exxon Mobile knew about the 2023 destruction of Earth by 1999 RQ36 18 years ago and didn’t tell anyone? I don’t think that’s going to work.
In your selection criteria, you left out “must have a rich victim”. Wealth transfer doesn’t work without that one. So the threat of the ocean. Who’s the donor party with that scheme?
Re asteroids – I can see NASA shouting “Me! Me! Me!”. And if it gets men back into space (even if they are oil-drilling roughnecks), I’d go for it!
Don’t forget coral bleaching/death, which can be linked to CO2.
A.I. and “Expert Systems” have been around for too long. A crisis needs “New New”.
Ha ha
Not sure if that was AI, certainly computer controlled fly-by-wire “expert” systems, the engines did not respond to the throttle input from the pilot, ie, “computer says no”…and simply did not respond soon enough, IIRC, to “save” the engines. This is why I prefer no ABS and traction control in cars…and I dread the day when “self drive” road based vehicles arrives.
Recently departing by train from Amsterdam the train came to an acute stop and a voice communicated: “a moment please, we have to reset the engine”. Smart mechanics and devices are my fear. Everything in my home is controlled by hand.
You cannot see them coming though, esp with a population quite effectively drunk and stupid because of their diet.
Its a modern truth that the definition of an alcoholic is someone who drinks more than their doctor. Or someone who eats more sugar than he/she/it.
And this endless zombified ‘sleep’ brings out the over-active startle-response, things just explode out of nowhere.
This one had everything. Emotional blackmail, political correctness, anti-r4cism, repentance for (carbon) sins and that’s even before you get into thinking of ‘The Grandchildren’, the environment, polar bears, pika and all other cuddly critters.
Oh maaaaan, what an act to follow.
And one thing it won’t be about, and damn well ought to be is “Dirt” or the lack of quality dirt – as has wiped out every civilisation to date.
It don’t really matter though because, as we now know, there will be plenty lawyers around to pass the buck and heap the blame onto someone else.
And when no suitable culprit is easily visible, Climate Change will do. After all, we are The Children of God and are utterly faultless.
Nick, where are you, we’ve got (good paying) work for ya! Better you’d get in there before them AI robot lawyers arrive. (now, can you see *that* happening? chuckle)
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
H. L. Mencken
They already started using water as the next scare as I explained in a WUWT article.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/01/water-is-replacing-climate-as-the-next-un-environmental-resource-scare/
Peter Gleick, who kept his job even though he admittedly used deception to obtain documents from the Heartland Institute, was well positioned to make the switch as he combined climate and water research.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/peter-gleick-admits-to-deception-in-obtaining-heartland-climate-files/?_r=0
He started using the term “Peak Water” a couple of years ago as demonstrated on his place of employment web site.
http://pacinst.org/issues/sustainable-water-management-local-to-global/peak-water/
Isn’t Peter Gleick the guy who demanded fresh water from a river in California not be used by people but be allowed to flow into the ocean because some smelt might be harmed?
Follow his lead and then, yeah, “Peak Water” might become a problem in some areas.
Come on Gunga, that had to be a knee jerk response. People eat fish. Fish eat smelt. If we completely stop the rivers, consume all water running to the pacific, we’re cutting off our own nuts. It isn’t a good plan.
The Colorado is completely dry after Mexico diverts the last (allotted1.5 million acre feet) of the water. It has been for a long time.
And wrt to the Sacremento, nobody wants or intends to completely stop the river, or consume all the water. But, a lot of people do think that the required Delta Smelt “fix” is to completely stop taking water from the basin for irrigation purposes. (and some people may not give a shit about the smelt, they just want to be part of a solution or movement that rewards emotionally or financially … where does Peter Gleick line up?)
I just checked. After all the efforts to save the Delta smelt … there is now only one remaining in the wild and she is not feeling well. Good news though, there is a hatchery program that can keep the project going long enough for our grandchildren to be able to see what a Delta smelt looks like in the wild (it’s the one that looks exactly like the Wakasagi smelt).
Bartleby, Knee jerk? When humans use water, where does it go? It doesn’t disappear. All of the water used used for irrigation to feed PEOPLE might not end up back in the river down stream but the rest of it does.
Are you saying Glieick claimed that all of the water from that river would have disappeared and then Romans Catholics wouldn’t have fish to eat on Friday during Lent?
Feed people or feed fish.
Priorities.
PS Are we talking about the Colorado River? Why not cut off LA? That might solve a lot of problems.
‘Peak water’ – I think CA (as the left coast in general) has been hoping for ‘peak drainage’ the last few weeks …
I live in a place where it rains for 9 months of the year. Not something that I can imagine worrying about. The water cycle is a closed system no? Plus we have the technology for purification on a large scale. We are still drinking the same H2O molecules that dinosaurs drank.
After much research, at great personal expense, I have identified the next coming catastrophe, after global warming starts sounding like good news, and stops scaring people:
Exploding silicone breast implants.
Extremely dangerous at close range.
Could take an eye out.
I’m not kidding — this is a major cause of emergency room visits***
*** Source: The Internet
I disagree with your assessment because you imply the wrong threat.
The first danger with AI is not that machines will conquer humanity, but that the few will use AI to dominate the many. This is already happening in military conflicts.
The second danger with AI is that many jobs will disappear, replaced by only a few highly skilled jobs.
To cite an example on the near horizon, where will the truck drivers go wheb autonomous trucking takes off?
I know a lot of truckers and you are going to be hard pressed to build a machine to do their job. Hell, just ratchet jawing on the CB is going to take 20 or so years to achieve, much less smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, looking at womens breastsss as they pass by, keep logs falsifieder, ah, I mean up to date AND operate the vehicle all while keeping the 3 girlfriends from finding out about each other or the wife,,,,,,,well, I just don’t see this happening in the foreseeable future
“Bust your ass, to deliver some string beans to Utah”
Zappa
Truck Driver Divorce
All this doom&gloom, ya got to keep the conversation lively!
This leaves one box unticked.
There is no threat to free markets and capital. The left needs a vehicle to achieve that tired and hackneyed aim.
… and I say we go back to trading in eighths (multiples of 1/8) on the stock market as well as manned ‘pits’ with real traders …
Going back only to 2000 , the list of AI horrors missed perhaps the hottest one of all , Julie Christie in Demon Seed , 1977 .
Having learned APL the first place in grad school at Northwestern in the ’70 to get an inkling of concepts necessary to understand how brains work , I see AI as algorithms and understanding a significant potential market for the “math” end of 4th.CoSy . I expect to be part of it , not fear it .
To me the fear of the reduced work necessary for producing ever better goods affordable for more of humanity echos essays read in high school in the early ’60s fretting over what Americans would do with the excess leisure time promised by the trajectory of affluence of the ’50s .
A good part of that ended up being consumed by ever increasing piles of paperwork demanded by the metastasizing government Leviathan .
But my general answer is : what’s scary about having more time to go fishing ?
Demon Seed is one of my favourite books, good movie too – an AI which leaks out of its box…
Your underlying premise is wrong. They are NEVER going to stop promoting climate change. There is no way to determine how much of the warming is due to natural variation and how much is due to CO2. So there is e is no way to falsify the theory. They just point to every weather event to “confirm” it, no matter how ridiculous the assertion.
Greenpeace alone raises $100 million a year yet air quality in the U.S. is better today than its been since at least 1980, according to EPA website. There are how many organizations like it? I can think of several. Climate change is a money making machine for green activists because it can’t be either proven or disproven. It’s the goose that lays golden eggs. The ideal scam. Too lucrative. It’s not going away.
Fortunately, the next eco-scare story cannot be as damaging as the current one.
This is the probably the high water mark of economically-damaging environmental alarmism. As Willis Eschenbach pointed out on his recent article, affordable energy forms the bedrock of industrial civilization. The eco-zealots have already laid their axe to the roots of the tree. There is nothing worse they can do, with the possible exception of outlawing drinking-water consumption that they consider harmful to the planet.
Oh now you did it. You jinxed us. Don’t sell your letter-ammo folks. The next one will be mega catastrophic.
In their defense, Pamela, I’ll say that most of the eco-zealots are likely too ignorant of the real issues. It will probably actually be a good thing to distract them from sabotaging the worlds energy supplies. If they find, say, a new insecticide to worry about then it might be quite easy to derail them away from CO2. The industrial world can easily digest the banning of a particular insecticide, just as it digested the banning of CFCs.
My bigger concern is that there are plenty of people in the financial community who understand all too well the importance of energy costs. This was a ‘great white hope’ for the banks to open up a whole new vista of trading opportunities on the back of government regulation of CO2. Some of them will not drop the topic lightly. They don’t actually give a flying-f about CO2 or global warming, but don’t want to see a potential gold-plated profit stream slipping away when margins are shrinking in traditional markets. Bankers in China want this, even while the Chinese government is still committed to expanding cheap coal-fired energy supply as far as is needed.
AI gone rogue is an unlikely scenario. First of all, intelligence is defined as problem solving capability. It is in short supply indeed in any human population, so there is huge economic incentive to develop artificial solutions. However, problem solving capability in itself does not drive anyone to destructive insanity.
To that end intelligence should be accompanied by lust for power. But the latter attribute is never in short supply anywhere on the face of Earth, therefore there is no incentive to develop an artificial version of it. And to imagine it would just emerge on its own as an epiphenomenon, is dreaming.
So I would not consider even advanced AI to be dangerous in itself.
On the other hand, if a small group of people would acquire full control of an advanced AI, excluding all other members of society, that would pose a grave danger to all indeed. Because they could provide the missing ingredient, an unbounded lust for power.
The obvious solution is checks and balances.
We should realize a kind of artificial intelligence called state is with us for millennia. It is a dangerous business, rogue states killed way more people in the last century than all other disasters combined.
This is why techniques developed throughout the ages to control the beast are indispensable in any similar situation, including AI used by subgroups to advance their agenda.
Berényi writes: “to imagine it would just emerge on its own as an epiphenomenon, is dreaming.”
Agreed. There’s no reason to think an AI would compete with humans. But could the behavior emerge? It’s difficult to rule out. Given we can’t possibly conceive how an AI would think or what value systems it might have, it’s also impossible to predict what it wouldn’t be. It’s an unknown. Like meeting an alien intelligence with a chlorine based metabolism. Who knows?
If I had to bet though, I’d bet you’re right. But I’m not sure and I don’t think anyone else should be either. Does that mean AI is a threat? Hell, breathing is a threat. You want to live forever?
Will, desire, urges are mental facilities different from intelligence, they do not just “emerge”, they have to be developed in a painfully slow process. In fact they are much more ancient in the animal kingdom, than intelligence, as they are just indispensable from an evolutionary point of view, while intelligence is not so much as long as one is restricted to a specific environment.
Therefore initially an AI would not possess these attributes and there is no pressure on it to develop them on its own, given its overall value is not measured against the number of offspring it leaves behind in the long run, but on its capability to solve problems posed by its masters. And you do not have to be a complete being to do that.
Moreover, I do not think electronic processing has the potential to be a million times faster than brain processes, so there is not that much leeway to surpass the human mind. The Hebbian theory is a clever one, but it is outdated. Neural network models based on it do work to a certain extent, but they can’t do miracles.
I do think actual brains utilize not only rather slow synaptic connections, but underlying much faster (&. vast) molecular processing networks as well, running at several hundred MHz or so. In other words, brains are much closer to limits forced by physics than it is generally supposed. They can even extend beyond the Turing paradigm, if physics allows it.
There is undoubtably a molecular information processing layer in eukaryotes, otherwise paramecia could not show complex behavior with no nervous system at all.
It is quite inconceivable that evolution has thrown away all previous development, which took some two and a half billion years to emerge, only to restart the entire information processing business in a different, rather inferior medium following the Cambrian explosion of multicellular life. It is much more likely it has built on previous results, so brains actually run at a many orders of magnitude higher rate, than suggested by the Hebb model.
I have no doubt we shall be able to develop machines surpassing the human intelligence, especially if actual brain code is cracked. AI does not have the same limiting factors as humans have, they do not have to survive and multiply in a harsh environment.
Brains are costly. First of all they are energy intensive. The human brain, which is about 2% of body mass, consumes 25% of metabolic energy at rest. And as soon as its energy supply is withdrawn, it starts to deteriorate structurally, in an irreversible manner. Quite odd behavior from an organ that is meant to function to support life. It can’t happen without a rather serious evolutionary pressure. What that pressure might be is anyone’s guess.
However, virtual temperature of subsystems of a system very far from thermal equilibrium, continually pumped by energy, can be arbitrarily close to absolute zero, as laser cooling shows. That’s where miracles happen at the molecular level.
And there is the inconvenient collateral fact, that in order to be human, we should walk in an upright position, which restricts width of the birth canal, limiting brain size of a newborn baby, so the organ can’t grow beyond a certain size even in adults.
These limitations do not apply to AI, so yes, it has a great potential to become more intelligent, than us. Not a million times more intelligent though.
Under these circumstances it can’t be an intelligence explosion, more like a puff. So I think we can deal with it.
Every so often I’m rewarded unexpectedly by a reader of this site. Thank you very much for your invaluable insights into intelligence, most especially for your discussion of molecular intelligence.
Anthropogenic scares since 1970’s in addition to cAGW: ice age, nuclear winter, radiation caused mutations (up to Godzilla), peak oil, ozone hole, acid rain, Y2K, extinctions, GMOs, chemicals, rubbish in the ocean, bird flu, red meat and nano materials.
We could throw in pandemics, slavery, famine, overcrowding and resource depletion, but they have triggered countless mass crimes in the history before 1970’s, perhaps even before Nero.
Don’t forget radon. That was a biggie a few decades ago.
This is slightly off topic but can be turned around, if readers just bear with me to explain. Today in Britain there is a lot of publicity for a new book by Prince Charles about climate change, published in a hitherto excellent series for young (easily misled) children on usually sensible subjects like farming, transport etc.
A review of the Prince’s book – which contains absurd scary illustration – in the Daily Telegraph actually says:
” The Prince has been trying to wake us up to the urgency of global warming for nearly five decades.” It appears to have been written without any sense of irony.
When I eventually finished laughing I realised this is the solution – we employ anyone surplus to need to write books about whatever scare story we need to frighten the children with!
We can make any number of wild guesses, but our approach is rational. No match for a religion.
One question that is arousing interest in Quora lately is ‘are we in a simulated universe?’. For some people this is obviously just a chance to try and lever gods back in to an increasingly mechanistic universe, but others are taking it seriously as a possibility to be ‘investigated’.
Since no investigation can possibly produce any result, and the possibilities for fear-mongering are literally infinite, I nominate this as a potential Panic of the Month for some point in the near future.
That explains Trump to “progressives”.
Eco-scare? Ecological scare? ?
Whatever . . but it seems to me the CAGW was/is an actual threat, not just a scare story. Based on a scare story, sure, but not just a scare story.
I’d agree with you but that would require not just you, but both of us to ignore the facts.
Nanotechnology, GMO, but also the good old threats of running out of resources (club of Rome). Food and human health : new gurus will appear. Rejection of vaccination programs. But also within a few years I expect reappriciation of fossil fuels. One big blackout (in Germany) suffices.
Wait, without AI, the LEFT wouldn’t be able to do ANYTHING.
A tax for using/living in sunlight. Post normal proclamations, the sun isn’t working like it should. We need to research and fix it. 98% agree.
My votes are with super saline oceans caused by excessive use of unnecessary desal plants, or Peak Lithium maybe
IMG_3765.JPG
You can’t go past the classic: “WarGames”, with Matthew Broderick in 1983.
Eric, your Hollywood list has a couple of huge omissions….
You forgot HAL in “2001, A Space Odyssey” (“open the pod-bay doors please HAL”) and “The Forbin Project”.
Ahh, I just remembered…For me the all time toptastic hero Captain James Kirk….”The Ultimate Computer”.
Jones – You Rule
another great ai.
how about this one:
Bring back life form. Priority One. All other priorities rescinded.
Di-Hydrogen Monoxide?