This Blog considers assisted suicide/euthanasia, bioethics, human cloning, biotechnology, radical environmentalism, and the dangers of animal rights/liberation. My views expressed here, as in my books and other writings, reflect my understanding that the philosophy of human exceptionalism is the bedrock of universal human rights. Or, to put it another way: human life matters. (The opinions expressed here are my own and not necessarily those of any organization with which I am affiliated.)
This video vividly explains how computer technology's geometric growth is profoundly changing the world--with results that may be beyond or ability to control. Secondhand Smoke notwithstanding to the contrary, by opening this particular Pandora's box, we may have finally found the place in which we became be too smart for our own good..
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 11:18 AM
13 Comments
I am a Senior Fellow in Human Rights and Bioethics at the Discovery Institute and the author of 12 books, including A Rat Is A Pig Is A Dog Is A Boy, which is relevant to the issues considered by this blog.
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13 Comments:
This will go in one of three general directions:
1) We destroy ourselves.
2) Our information technology destroys, replaces or marginalizes us.
3) We merge with our information technology.
Lincoln: Welcome back, pal.
Thanks, Wesley. I've been around -- just quiet.
This video comes from the Kurzweil AI people. So what? Information is nothing more than a resource. The idea of "control" is such nonsense. You simply use it to do whatever you want to do.
It should be obvious that the very concept of centralized "top-down" hierarchies is obsolete. They are the archaic relics from the mid-20th century industrial age. The is no "one future". Rather, there are many "futures" consisting of decentralized "bottom-up" spontaneous self-order.
I agree with your perspective on a plurality of futures, kurt9, although each future will be for an individual or group with varying control within varying scopes -- control (power) is not nonsensical except from an absolute perspective.
I want to make another comment about this video. For the most part it is hype. All exponential processes moderate sooner or later.
Take internet bandwidth, for example. In the late 90's, everyone was saying that the demand was increasing at 1000% a year and that this would continue for the next 20 year. I was in a telecoms start-up (optical filters for DWDM), in Taiwan no less. You could see the dollar signs in our eyes. We expected to make truck-loads of money. Then in April '01, it all came to a screeching halt. It just died. It turned out that only 3% of the broadband capacity (fiber) was "lit". The telecoms industry crashed, along with our start-up. It turned out that all of those VCs, investment bankers, and other MBA pointy-heads all went to the same place for their due diligence - the senior managers of MCI World Com who, I might add, are all in prison for fraud.
It turned out that the demand for broadband was not exponential after all. The demand is increasing once again, but it is not exponential.
Also, real science-based technology (except for biotech) does not change as fast as this video suggests. in areas like plasma-based fusion or materials science, you can find all sorts of papers going back several decades that are quite relevant today.
Very interesting and educational video Wesley especially for a guy like me.
I don't know if I should comment on The Bermuda "Triangle v.s U.S & Japan or address "IT" all to our Blessed God.
On the serious side and yes Wesley it's hard to believe but I can on occasion be serious. :)
Anyway, for years now I've always accepted that I'll probably be taken care of by Chinese Citizen during my old age and I guess that's why I've been so kind to them when ever I've had the pleasure to meet one of them.
I recall that my wife and I renting a room to a few of them cause our Children had all left us. These Chinese citizen were both going to College in our city and to make a long story short, one of them just blew my mind when I tried to show her a math trick. It was like a twilight zone moment. She took a pad and showed me formulas and in less than a minute had covered the page and I had lost her in the first few seconds but she still kept explaining. :) From then on, all my wife and I could do was to show her a little love and I guess we did cause a year or two later we met her again at a mall and she gave us both a hug.
So far I've learned that our brain contains about 100 Trillion cells and I gladly gave them all to Our Lord and Savior to do as He sees fit.
I hear ya Wesley! What do you think about this Exponential Time that we're experiencing?
What could I say that anyone would listen to?
Have you been drinking again sinner vic?
Just a little!
I'm with you, Kurt. I work in IT, and it's interesting how the mystical "computer with more power than the human brain" keeps getting pushed back as they find out the human brain is more complex than they think it is. And even those estimates are assuming the brain's capacity can be calculated exclusively in arithmetic operations per second.
New technologies expand quickly, then they slow down. The Internet was new in the 1990s. Biotech is new now. I'm less than convinced that both will continue to grow at their current rate for the next decade, let alone the next few centuries.
The more I learn about the "singularity" some are predicting, the more I think it's mostly arm-waving and special pleading.
I think that is amazing :) We live in extraordinary times. It will probably all end in tears as you fear, but at least the ride should be interesting
I don't have much to add to this conversation, other than one of the best things I see coming out of IT is decentralization. Many (myself included) are able to get away from the "daily grind" to be self-employed - a throw back to the old days of self-sufficiency.
I also don't know much about it, so it is interesting to hear all of your perspectives on IT. Lincoln, I can't begin to predict which of the three scenarios play out, but I know many of our parents and almost all of our grandparents (If you born in the 70s or later) feel a little marginalized. Youth adapt well to these things. I was born in 1984 and was there for all of this taking off, but I don't send text messages, I don't twitter, I was slow getting on instant messenger and an email and starting a blog. I have a Facebook profile and started my organization's presence there, but even with that I feel often many of us only get dragged on to new media because they feel they have to adapt (I guess that's normal), not because we want to our it makes our lives better. But when will today's titans of texting begin to feel marginalized after a job, a house, a marriage and children takes away all their energy and focus from gadgets to the stuff that really matters in life? Will their kids be rolling their eyes at them?
SparcVark,
Its not that the human brain is more complex than we thought, but that computers and brains are totally different. Brains are inherently dynamic. Not only are dendritic connection continually reconfigured, new neurons are continually grown to replace old neurons. There is no current or planned computer architecture that is based on this dynamism. Also, human memory is chemical in nature. Computer memory is electronic. One can make electronic simulations of brains, but those simulations will be rough approximations of what brains really do.
I believe the only way to make sentient AI would be to use the same kind of nanotechnology that human brains use ("wet" biological processes). In other words, the computer becomes like the biological brain rather than the other way around. This could probably be done, but what would be the point?
We make and use computers as tools to extend our capabilities. Computers are far superior to human brains for mathematical calculations and simulation models. They are not good for doing things we use our own brains for (judgment, goal setting, etc.). These are things we want to use our own brains for anyways because these are the things that make up our identities.
I know a transhumanist (who is now in cryonic suspension, due to cancer) who argued for the above reason why sentient AI is not likely for many decades and why, with regards to uploading, we will remain "biological" for some centuries to come.
He has a very "biological" world-view (as I do) with regards to what kind of technologies we can expect in the future.
http://www.alcor.org/printable.cgi?fname=Library%2Fhtml%2F24thcenturymedicine.html
Is a snap shot of the kind of capabilities he expects in the future.
Not too smart for our own good. Not smart enough.
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