Catholic Answers article on the Singularity

[FishbellykanakaDude]

But who (or what) decides WHAT to MAKE (and what to do with it) within the economy?

..I've really got no problem being a well looked after pet, as long as I can be creative and take my own risks as I see fit.

That's what the AI wants you to think

Heh he he.... that wily AI Overlord! But,.. if "me as free pet" looks like a duck, and smells like a duck...?

In all seriousness this idea wreaks of 18th(?) century physics when they thought the world was perfectly deterministic and it was just a matter of time before we could calculate and know everything that will ever happen... how foolish does that look these days? ...

There seem to be a few reasons, in my mind, as to why this idea of God AI has taken hold. First it represents a secularized religion so it can appeal to a lot of the "rational" world. If you don't think it represents that, look at the people saying it is going to rule us. Kurzweil might as well open his own church of Scientology. Another reason why it has taken hold is it prays on man's strongest emotions, fear, specifically fear of technology (think Frankenstein but it goes farther back). As is noted in "the rational optimist" a lot of fear mongering goes on in the short term that never comes to be largely because it sells books and gets viewers. Which brings me to the last reason this myth is around: philosophers. The book that started the larger conversation is "Superintelligence" which was written by a philosopher. The field of philosophy seems to be, in the tradition of the original greek philosophers, the art of reasoning with ill-defined concepts. As soon as it becomes well defined it just becomes science. I'm sure philosophers will latch on to this idea for a short while so they can feel relevant if only for a brief shimmering moment.

Personally, I'm not a big believer in the whole AI Overlord thing (aka "the singularity"). For the AI "Overlord" (singular) to have the same (or greater) "control" over the affairs of mankind, it would have to be a vast multiplicity of AIs that are "mobile" (autonomously mobile at least equivalent to humans) and "interconnected" (not a difficult get) such that the "AI Overlord" is really an army of AIs essentially acting as a "hive mind and swarm". Allowing such a "thing" would be VERY dubious (unlikely) to me, because it's pretty easy to see the danger in allowing such a thing.

Just my opinion, but then EVERYTHING I say is really just my opinion. We shouldn't REALLY need to state that obvious fact, but people seem to have a habit of conveniently forgetting that it is a fact.

But, more to the question on the table, which is "What happens when robotic AI [worker AI] takes jobs away from a HUGE part of the human population?", there WILL be a time (not too distant) when a guaranteed "comfortable income" level will be universally distributed (within a "nation"), which WILL allow anyone to become "a pet" of society such that they will be able to do what they find "most enjoyable", whatever that may mean.

The BALANCE to that "opportunity" will be that there will be an explosion of criminal laws concerning the "abuse" (definition?) of ones' freedom within society.

In other words, I will get essentially free "pleasant minimal" housing, food, recreation, doctoring and "improvement accretion" (a growing bank account), and if I want to educate myself to do great things, I can do so.

..I can also build my teeny little boat and live on and sail the oceans as I see fit. In fact, it might make sense to pay me MORE for the risk I'm taking living such a semi-suicidal minimalistic lifestyle!

But the choices are basically two: USE the brains of the "less obligated and growing-ish" population, or kill them.

(( Further conversation about this is MOST welcome by me. Call me a "socialist" and see what happens,.. I dare 'ya!! <chuckle!> ))


Aloha nui kākou! <shaka nui!>

[uncertainty]

SOCIALIST! I did it. I touched the butt (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCoKdqXfpBw)

I'm against it. If everything plays out "as it should" (whatever that means) everything that one would "need" would become so inexpensive and the means of creating the required wealth so easy there wouldn't be a need for the government to "spread the wealth".

One of the biggest things I am looking forward to though is seeing the massive bureaucracies collapse and become automated. So much work right now exists in these massive machines pushing people though. Once AI gets a grip there will only remain experts of those respective domains that do it for the love of the sport.

[FishbellykanakaDude]

SOCIALIST! I did it. I touched the butt (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCoKdqXfpBw)

<CHORTLE!> Hee heh he he he... Touche!

I am the buh-utt,.. They are the Buh-utts,.. I am the walrus,
Goo goo g'joob, goo goo goo g'joob
Goo goo g'joob, goo goo goo g'joob, goo goo

I'm against it. If everything plays out "as it should" (whatever that means) everything that one would "need" would become so inexpensive and the means of creating the required wealth so easy there wouldn't be a need for the government to "spread the wealth".

People will still fight over "free" stuff.

It still "costs effort" to distribute resources, and those who "distribute" stuff will STILL be seen as "the evil bringers" who don't "bring stuff fast enough or large enough".

There is no taking "greed and envy" out of ANY human transactional system.

The ONLY "solution" to this "greed and envy" is to draw very clear boundaries between "acceptable" and "unacceptable" behavior (as regards resources) and severely criminalize "unacceptable" behavior with truly draconian punishment.

One of the biggest things I am looking forward to though is seeing the massive bureaucracies collapse and become automated. So much work right now exists in these massive machines pushing people though. Once AI gets a grip there will only remain experts of those respective domains that do it for the love of the sport.

AI controlled "expert systems" will do all the "drudge work". Bureaucracy is an "expert rule set" whose goal is to perform some function efficiently. The AI will hone (evolve) the system to be as efficient as it can. The "Pathological Human Habit" of constructing bureaucracies to do OTHER THAN perform a function efficiently (as a "welfare system") will become severely criminalized, and heads will roll.

Therefore, those at the bottom (the "jobless") and those at the top (the "experts"/"manipulators") will be under heavy pressure to let the AI do its job (efficient conversion of "the economy"). WHO will apply and enforce the new "rules and consequences of bad behavior"?

It will be those with the "biggest guns" to enforce the rules.

One HUGE "gun" will be the ability to persuade massive numbers of people to "wait a while" for a shit load of free stuff that is "just around the corner".

Another gun will be lightning fast draconian elimination of "law breakers".

And who will be these "enforcers"? And who will command them?

So,.. the transition period will be "messy". It will be "less messy" the more "convincing" and "demonstrative" the argument is that "Manna from the AI" is truly close.

..otherwise,.. it will be "necessary" to "preserve" the AI Constructors and kill all but a "diverse like-minded breeding stock" and "effective enforcement army" of humanity until the AI has its own "robot enforcers" to handle "criminals".

Therefore, the AI Constructors had better be VERY demonstratively convincing that "resistance is futile", or it's all going to go sideways, big time.

..should be interesting though!

(( And that's why I'm not a big believer in the Singularity. Making robot "laborers" and "expert logisticians" are doable in an incremental way, while allowing a "singular" AI super-being, and its (human) minions, to attempt the "Leisure and Altruistic Society" transition is too much of an ask for an "unenlightened" mankind. ))


Aloha! <shaka!>

[John]

> ( And that's why I'm not a big believer in the Singularity. Making
> robot "laborers" and "expert logisticians" are doable in an
> incremental way, while allowing a "singular" AI super-being, and
> its (human) minions, to attempt the "Leisure and Altruistic
> Society" transition is too much of an ask for an "unenlightened"
> mankind. )

There's a widespread belief that the US or the UN or someone can set
ethical rules that will control whether the Singularity occurs, and
what it will be permitted to do and forbidden from doing.

This is a total fantasy, with no relationship to reality. The
Singularity is coming as a force of nature, and no country or
organization can stop it or control it.

For example, if you imagine that the US will pass laws controlling the
growth and operation of intelligent computers, then those laws won't
stop developments in Europe, India and China. And even if somehow all
of those national governments could be convinced to agree to these
laws (in itself a totally unrealistic fantasy), then that wouldn't
stop some teenage computer hacker working in his mother's basement
from doing the same thing.

So look, get used to it. You might as well just lie back and enjoy
it.

[John]

> In all seriousness this idea [reeks] of 18th(?) century physics
> when they thought the world was perfectly deterministic and it was
> just a matter of time before we could calculate and know
> everything that will ever happen... how foolish does that look
> these days?

First, I have to make mention of The Turk, an enormous contraption
that toured Europe and America in the late 18th and early 19th
centuries, that could mysteriously make moves on chessboards, but
which really contained a chess playing dwarf inside. It defeated such
luminaries as Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon, and apparently fooling
everyone. Edgar Allen Poe wrote that something isn't right about the
Turk, since it occasionally made mistakes and a true machine would
play flawless chess and would always win. Poe's remark reflected the
view at the time that you summarized, that machines would always
produce perfect results and perfect predictions.

So now, discussing the issue of determinism. Ignoring "accidents,"
most people have a completely non-deterministic view of the world, in
the sense that they believe that anything that happens is either an
accident or controlled by a human being, usually a politician.
Furthermore, the popular view is one of "free will" -- that a
politician or other human being is free to do anything he decides to
do. The conclusion then is that all major events are controlled by
politicians, or other human beings, such as CEOs.

What Generational Dynamics has done is to redefine the concept of
determinism to show exactly what is and is not predetermined, and
therefore what can and cannot be predicted. For example, a world war
can be predicted, but not the details of the precise scenario that
will lead to the world war.

Today, the theory behind determinism is not physics but Chaos Theory.
The way that Generational Dynamics uses Chaos Theory is described in a
book chapter:

** Book II - Chapter 4 - Chaos Theory and Generational Forecasting
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/ ... recast.htm

That chapter contains some errors, but the core ideas are valid --
that in a world full of individual political decisions and chaotic
events, there are still "chaotic attractors," and these attractors are
the things that are predetermined and can be predicted.

One analogy that I like to use is throwing a rock into the middle of a
lake. The motions of the individual molecules of water are random,
with no purpose or goal. But if you pull back and look at the lake as
a whole, you can see that those randomly moving molecules have formed
themselves into waves, and those waves are the attractors.

I said above that the details of the precise scenario for WW III
cannot be predicted, but in fact even that statement is being
narrowed. The original "fourth turning" concept was that some (vague,
unspecified) crisis would occur. I narrowed this to a world war, and
over the years I narrowed the general "world war" concept to China +
Pakistan + Sunni countries versus the US + India + Russia + Iran + the
West. This is a time-dependent phenomenon. In 1945, Generational
Dynamics could only have predicted a crisis early in the next century.
But as the years go by, the shapes of the "chaotic attractors" become
more apparent, and we can more precisely forecast what will happen, or
at least narrow down the list of possibilities.

In a sense, that's the purpose of these thousands of "World View"
articles that I've been writing in the last few years. Whenever
possible, these articles describe narrowly how individual countries
are fitting into the broad world war prediction. The details of
the scenario leading to world war are becoming more and more
precisely defined.

> Logic is merely the tool of emotions, used to justify conclusions
> already drawn.

> Genocide and psychopathy (insanities) are perfectly logical. The
> logic USED is perverse, but it is still "logic".

The interesting thing about Fishy's statement here is that it implies
an equivalence (whether intended or not) or determinism in the case of
individuals and populations. Generational Dynamics addresses the
question of determinism in populations, backed up Chaos Theory, but
explicitly avoids making claims in individuals. We forecast
geopolitical events by looking at generational flows and applying
System Dynamics techniques. If this equivalence is true, then we can
look at an individual's emotional development, and forecast individual
acts in the same way.

In fact, I do accept this equivalence, because there's a popular term
for individual determinism -- a "calling." Some people are "called"
to be a priest, others are "called" to be a politician.

In my own case, I've been irrestibly "called" to developing
Generational Dynamics. I can think of dozens of events, dating back
to high school and college, that caused me to make choices that led me
to this development. For example, in the 1970s I read an article on
technological trend forecasting. I probably read thousands of
articles in those times, but that particular article made an enormous
impression on me, and eventually turned into a book chapter decades
later:

** Book I / Chapter 11 -- Trend Forecasting
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/ ... .trend.htm

As another example, in the days after 9/11/2001, I heard hundreds
of news reports, interviews and analyses, but the one that leapt
out at me was one by William Strauss on the Fourth Turning.
If I hadn't seen that interview, would my life be completely
different? That's an interesting question that I can't answer,
but there are other routes by which I might have arrived at this
situation, and I'm pretty certain that sooner or later I would
have been driven to choose one of them.

The fact is that even in the context of my World View articles, I do
sometimes talk about individual determinism. For example, I
constantly say that Bashar al-Assad is a genocidal psychopath who is
the cause and driver of the war in Syria, and that the war will never
end as long as he's in power. That's essentially a deterministic
statement about him. I've made similar statements about other
Awakening era leaders following an ethnic crisis civil war -- Paul
Biya in Cameroon, Pierre Nkurunziza in Burundi, Paul Kagame in Rwanda,
Yoweri Museveni in Uganda, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Joseph Kabila in
DRC, or, outside of Africa, Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Hun Sen in
Cambodia.

Fishy's posting, excerpted above, was in response to whether Turkey's
Erdogan's actions would be emotional or logical. However, an
"emotional" decision by Erdogan is quite different from an "emotional"
decision by al-Assad.

Syria is in a generational Awakening era, and al-Assad's emotions
are driven by his internal psychopathy.

Turkey is in a generational Crisis era, and Erdogan's emotions are
driven by an extremely nationalistic and xenophobic population.

So both decisions are "emotional" and "deterministic," but in quite
different senses.

So the net result is that I've reached the conclusion that "free will"
is far overrated, and at lot of what happens in the world is
predetermined. And in these two postings I've discussed three
different kinds of determinism: the nationalistic decisions of
Erdogan, the psychopathic decisions of al-Assad, and the coming of the
Singularity through technology trend forecasting.

Friedrich Nietzsche: "Insanity in individuals is something rare -
but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."

[FishbellykanakaDude]

> ( And that's why I'm not a big believer in the Singularity. .... )

There's a widespread belief that the US or the UN or someone can set
ethical rules that will control whether the Singularity occurs, and
what it will be permitted to do and forbidden from doing.

This is a total fantasy, with no relationship to reality. The
Singularity is coming as a force of nature, and no country or
organization can stop it or control it.

AI development will continue on its exponential curve. But there are only two points of contact between an AI and "the real world". Those two contact points are: Robot manipulation of something physical, and manipulating data.

An incredibly smart person in a coma is no more "effective" as a real word manipulator than is an orange.

The "overlord" AI would have to be granted exclusive uninterruptible manipulation of "powerful" physical things and vital data. It's the "exclusive" and "uninterruptible" parts that will be the tricky part.

For example, if you imagine that the US will pass laws controlling the
growth and operation of intelligent computers, then those laws won't
stop developments in Europe, India and China. And even if somehow all
of those national governments could be convinced to agree to these
laws (in itself a totally unrealistic fantasy), then that wouldn't
stop some teenage computer hacker working in his mother's basement
from doing the same thing.

So look, get used to it. You might as well just lie back and enjoy
it.

It's not the development of the "overlord" AI that is the issue. It's the connection of "it" to the physical world.

This is yet another example of the "last mile" problem from logistics. The "energy barrier" inherent in that last damned connection between what the AI "wants" and what humans will, or CAN, give it is (probably) dense enough to allow the actual people involved in the "transition of power" to "disobey orders" (or sabotage the system) and disallow that last link.

There will be a time when certain data connections will warrant a summary death penalty for the "connector".

Those "governments" (and other resource rich entities) who even SEEM to be allowing those "capital connections" will be instantly nuked by the "proper authority".

..and if all the countermeasures are breached, the "overlord" AI still has to deal with its resources being strangled by "pesky humans".

There are so many unimagined "energy barriers" between humans using AI as a tool and humans becoming subservient to an "overlord" AI that, just as the Jetson's Ubiquitous Flying Car and the (Nazi) Damming of the Mediterranean Project has been "elusive", Colossus will become just a very real cautionary boogie man in the forest.

And if I'm wrong, then it'll at least make for a nifty story! ..for somebody,.. I suppose,.. in the forest.


Aloha nui! <shaka!>

[John]

> The "overlord" AI would have to be granted exclusive
> uninterruptible manipulation of "powerful" physical things and
> vital data. It's the "exclusive" and "uninterruptible" parts that
> will be the tricky part.

What about the fact that intelligent robots will be used in war, and
sent out with instructions to kill the enemy.

[FishbellykanakaDude]

> The "overlord" AI would have to be granted exclusive
> uninterruptible manipulation of "powerful" physical things and
> vital data. It's the "exclusive" and "uninterruptible" parts that
> will be the tricky part.

What about the fact that intelligent robots will be used in war, and
sent out with instructions to kill the enemy.

What about it?

Not putting an "off" switch on a killer robot, or giving the roboslayer carte blanche to "do as it pleases", or making so many of them that they can overwhelm ANY human-guided (aka: "non-super-intel" AI guided) "force", would be rather stupid, wouldn't it?

..of course, stupidity is NOT unheard of in large collections (or small collections) of humans, so I'll give you that. <chuckle!>

The "trick" is to be able to identify the initial "transcendent" AI, and then not connect it to things that are "physically powerful" or "vital data manipulators".

The term "sandbox" comes to mind.

That old Buckeroo Bonzai phrase, " No, no, no, don’t tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to!", also comes to mind.


Aloha ku'u hoaloha! <shaka koa nui!>

[John]

An on-off switch? <CHORTLE!> Hee heh he he he

[uncertainty]

Turkey is in a generational Crisis era, and Erdogan's emotions are
driven by an extremely nationalistic and xenophobic population.

Second hand confirmation of GD in NK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7hf5wbggdA
~4:30 Kim wants to change culture but people forcing him to be like this.