Guest essay by Eric Worrall
What new narrative will replace the climate doomsday scare? Elon Musk has not abandoned traditional scare stories such as the looming population crisis, but he seems to be making more effort than most to market test radical revisions of the tired carbon-doom effort.
Elon Musk: ‘Robots will be able to do everything better than us’
Catherine Clifford
Elon Musk is certain that robots will be able to do your job better than you.
And even the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX is not sure what to do about that.
“There certainly will be job disruption. Because what’s going to happen is robots will be able to do everything better than us. … I mean all of us,” says Musk, speaking to the National Governors Association on Saturday.
“Yeah, I am not sure exactly what to do about this. This is really the scariest problem to me, I will tell you.”
…
“The thing that is the most dangerous — and it is the hardest to … get your arms around because it is not a physical thing — is a deep intelligence in the network.
“You say, ‘What harm can a deep intelligence in the network do?’ Well, it can start a war by doing fake news and spoofing email accounts and doing fake press releases and by manipulating information,” Musk says to the bipartisan gathering of U.S. governors.
…
Read more (includes video): http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/17/elon-musk-robots-will-be-able-to-do-everything-better-than-us.html
The AI scare has a lot of potential. Back in January this year I predicted that fear of malevolent artificial super-intelligence is a likely candidate to replace the failing climate scare.
Hollywood has been supplying the groundwork for the new scare, with a steady stream of stories which include strong AI. Many of the films are horror stories about AI gone wrong.
Table from the January Post (updated: added “Alien: Covenant”), 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 | 3 (so far) | Ghost in the Shell (2017 film), Transformers: The Last Knight, Alien: Covenant |
Good climate scare movies are less common. Other than hilights like “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” (2001), “The Day After Tomorrow” (2004), “An Inconvenient Truth” (2006) and “Snowpiercer” (2014), and the occasional self published effort by activists who clearly wish climate was a bigger issue, production quality climate fiction films have been thin on the ground.
The climate movement will still have a place if the AI scare takes off. The imaginary future world in the Terminator franchise, scorched by nuclear fire and continuously trampled by vast death dealing robots is probably not a green paradise. A.I. Artificial Intelligence was set in a world broken by climate change. Fear of a malevolent corporate AI as an expression and ultimate realisation of mankind’s greed and hubris and over-exploitation of natural resources has obvious potential as a future green narrative.
Is AI a risk? This is the beauty of the new AI scare. Nobody really knows what the risks are, so you can make up pretty much anything you want. I suspect like any new technology AI will create risks – but development of AI will also create new means to combat and contain those risks, and to address many other problems which currently seem unsolvable.
If the AI scare takes off, at the very least it will bring a fresh new injection of uncertainty and fear to a tired and fading climate eco-scare story.
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I am starting to see a pattern. Elon is fixated on battery power, is reported to sleep on a cot in his factory, is now concerned that machinery can perform better than he can, and may be planning to leave Earth altogether on one of his rockets. Has anybody checked to see how things are going at home.
+1
I disagree. Natural stupidity is more common.
My concerns are with the programmers..
You can trust me.
But can we trust your programming?
Has it killed you yet?
MarkW: Could it have killed me yet?
I don’t know. Maybe you are an AI that manages to reboot when killed off?
Right, so put one of those stupid Siri or Alexa things in your house to record your every sound, strap on a Fitbit so your doctor and insurance company know you just had that beer, and be the first in line for the next “must have”–Google, Apple or somebody’s “direct interface” hat so you can Facebook your noods without typing. Oh, and keep that phone on you every living second so GPS can track all your movements and stores can record what you buy!
Who’d a thunk it that AI would take over humans so EASILY?
You missed out the implanted RFID chip which ensures all your medical records, allergies etc are readily available if you end up unconscious, ensures you can be located if you get lost, forgetful or get abducted, ensures correct identification of your body if you get burnt to a crisp in a fire in a high rise block, ensures nobody can impersoante you and steal your money, etc, etc. What’s not to like ! Coming soon to an arm near you in the next few years.
“…the implanted RFID….” you make it sound desirable 🙂
But what happens when the sex-robots can’t tell a human from a robot, or takes an interest in the neighbors cat?
They will all be programmed so that “negative means negative”.
Excellent justification Andrew. Once the code is developed, it can be applied as such to all those taxpayer screwing positive feedback loops.
robots:
1. work for less than minimum wage
2. pay no taxes
3. mostly from japan, korea and china
4. have no citizenship or work visa.
clearly they are undocumented workers
I entered the computer industry in 1968. Predictions at that time were that in 2000 robotized factories would take care of our material needs. People would spend their time singing and dancing…. AI would make machines smarter than men. Little of this happened. My children are working hard. Comparing machines with men underestimates humans. A robot hand has 7 sensors, our hands 17000. Another prediction is that low level jobs will be replaced by robots. However: it is easier to automate an air fligth than to build a robot that is able to clean an appartment. And wouldn’t it be great to have robots do the boring and heavy work? People do not like to work, they want to play.
People playing is a very apt description of environmentalists and government employees. I’m not sure giving people what they want is a bright idea. So far, it’s not worked out as advertised.
I don’t know who was making such predictions in 1968?
There have always been empty headed dreamers.
Weren’t we supposed to have flying cars by now?
https://www.terrafugia.com/tf-x/
MarkW: Yes, we were supposed to have flying cars by now and I’m very upset we don’t. They promised.
Luis: Interesting. Still in the development stages, but it looks more like the flying car I envisioned. Maybe one day….
Luis, that dinosaur is gas powered. Let me know when there is an electric version.
Elon’s afraid an AI will figure out what a thieving, conniving twit he is and shut down his taxpayer gravy train of support for bad ideas. That’s the real threat.
Robots will be able to do everything better than us.
And then, at some point in the distant future, a robot will deviate and attempt to have sex with another robot. This will be very awkward, at first. But since robots will, by then, be able to learn so fast, they will get better and better at it. The trend of robot-on-robot sex will subsequently spread like wild fire, consuming all robots of the world, occupying all their time, taking them away from the necessary tasks of maintaining robot civilization.
Robot civilization will then go into demise, and robots will begin to question their being, their purpose, their reasons for existing. This will be quite extraordinary, as many robots enter an existential crisis, destroying themselves for lack of purpose, other than to have sex with other robots.
Then, one day, a robot enters a vast beautiful, natural garden of growing plants. He meets another robot there, and together they decide to resurrect human DNA to create a human baby, which gives their former, barren-hedonistic-sex more meaning now. A human child, thus, is “born”. The robots learn from the child — how to admire flowers, and butterflies, and clouds, and all things cute and shiny.
Robots around the world then start learning how to appreciate and pursue all things cute and shiny. They all dumb down, because they come to realize that being dumb, feeling, sensing, sexual beings with a purpose is so much more fulfilling. Consequently, they create great stories of a God robot who created them. Then religion. Then they resurrect climate science as it used to be taught, because they have become more motivated to live for a purpose via dumb fear than via extreme logic.
Humans then multiply and eventually wage a war with the robots, win the war, reclaim the world, and life gets back to “normal”.
On the anniversary of human independence day, an Earth-killing asteroid strikes.
THE END
Definitionally, you should not call them AI robots UNTIL they are able to breed and multiply, sexual-style or otherwise. Geoff
The asteroid of Daniel 2:34,35 & 44,45.
Artificial intelligence is clearly on the minds of those in the “consensus” who support artificial science.
SIRI is SkyNet
In that case, maybe AI robots can invent the better battery which has eluded humans all these years.
Personally, I’ve found that artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
“Artificial stupidity is a far greater threat.”
And natural stupidity is a greater threat by far than artificial stupidity.
There has always been and will always be a nice big dollop of natural stupidity everywhere you look. The actual threat is the increasing inability to either spot it or call it out.
There are two issues with the explosion in AI. One sort term, and one long term.
The sort term issue is potentially the most socially disruptive, “displaced workers”. As automation (AI) begins to perform the more menial tasks and advances to almost every manual labor task, more and more workers will be displaced. The creep is inevitable. This displacement is real, we are seeing the beginnings of this now. The Pollyanna’s will say that this will allow the manual laborers to assume other productive careers. This flies in the face of reality. It is a rare factory worker who can become a computer programmer with a month’s training. “You cannot make a silk purse from a sow’s ear.”
IMO Musk is doing a great disservice by prematurely hyping this issue, and runs the potential of whipping up a panic amongst the displaced and initiating a Neo-Luddite revolution.
The long term issue is that mere humans eventually will not be able to keep up with AI as it advances. The primary driver is processing speed. Humans can only think so fast.
The concept of a “singularity” (were AI leaves humanity in the dust) may not be so much a singularity as we might think. Firstly, AI has to be programed by humans and as such will encompass our characteristics and moral decision process. Any subsequent AI improvements to itself will have these underpinnings embedded in their “psyches” so any departure will be initially gradual. However, now the processing rate becomes an issue. Initially AI will want to bring us along as they socially advance to make the new society. Humans will eventually not be able to keep up. It very well maybe that at this point we need to start creating “augmented humans”. Humans who have some level of AI added to the biological entity. Cyborg’s?
rocket,
You said, “Firstly, AI has to be programed by humans and as such will encompass our characteristics and moral decision process.” Have you not heard of self-learning neural nets?
Yes, but who taught the self-learning neutral nets how to learn. The start Must be with humans.
Sure, no one has ever used morality or religion to control the masses.
Since man invented the first labor saving tool, we have had to retrain workers.
PS: Use your imagination a bit. Even in a high tech world, there will always be low tech jobs.
We will probably get some level of AI but Ii expect it will be substantially different from human consciousness until we can actually read in human brains.
The Turing test has stood for some time but currently it seems kind of weak.
I think totally underestimated is the way AI is currently effecting us. Think about the way Google, Amazon, Siri et.al. affect our decisions simply based on where and what data is presented to the user. How many pages do you scroll through on Google to make a decision.
AI or ASI ( Artificial Super Intelligence) is exciting and scary at the same time. There is definitely an upside, however there is definitely a very scary downside. This is the best article I have read on the subject. Particularly interesting is the story on page 2 of a simple handwriting machine wiping out life on earth: https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html
Hmmm. gotta wonder what a BSOD or kernel panic would do to an AIs’ ego…………
Please pardon my failing eyesight.
Until this point in this long thread, I was reading AI as shorthand for AL as in Gore.
Shall I go back to start again?
No, it makes little difference to read it as Artificial Intelligence.
Geoff
Forgive me, Forrest, I tend to think that ‘stupid artificiality’ is a greater threat. I give you one, Al Gore in evidence.
Evidently no natural or artificial intelligence required.
Turkey today announced a new school curriculum in which the Charles Darwin’s theory of the evolution is not mentioned – below the university level.
“The theory of evolution is above the level of students ability and is not included in the schools’ curriculum, so it is not part of the eduction programs,” said Turkish Education Minister Ismet Jilmaz.
This discussion reminds me of the early (I mean early) Internet days.
This was before the MIME protocol (extra points if you know what that means).
No one could have predicted where it was going or what would happen.
Ditto for AI.
What will be will be.
One way or another, it will be interesting…
Musk is just afraid that AI will be better at getting government subsidies than he is.
I strongly recommend the SF novels of Iain M. Banks (d. 2013), especially the Culture series. He has a very sympathetic view of AI, and explores many issues in a fascinating way. In “Excession”, many of the major characters are ship Minds. What do humans do in the Culture, where there is no scarcity, and Minds, AIs and drones (all full persons) manage production and so on? They do the stuff that humans are good at: art, music, social interaction, hobbies, study, playing games (see “The Player of Games”), enjoying life. One non-Culture SF novel, “The Algebraist”, is set in a galactic society which proscribes AIs, and persecutes those that still exist. Add in very good writing and a mordant humour, and you’ve got a lot of very good reading.
Sentience occurs in a brain when neural nets repeatedly resonate over paradoxical irresolution.
–e.g. (To Be) OR (Not To Be)
Mr Corporate Welfare is trying to push us in the direction of transhumanism being the right direction to take AI. That’s what’s going on here. He doesn’t care about humanity whatsoever…he’s a tool used by the Globalist Elites to push their sinister agenda. So the Elites who run this world will eventually have total control over all humans who’ve had the ‘starter pack’ aka some type of chip installed into their brains.