11 Comments

Isn't the Genie out of the bottle? Can it realistically be controlled? There are many nefarious and unethical people out there.

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yes and no

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'Artificial intelligence' is presented to us as an adjective and a noun. The noun gets all of the attention, but understanding the adjective is most important in evaluatiing how to deal with it. Human intelligence is based on sensory inputs from multiple modalities (e.g., light, sound, etc) over the period extending from infancy into the experiences of the rest of life. Conditioning, learning, memory, recall, analysis, and expression are all involved in the behaviors that we eventually describe as intelligence. Artificial intelligence is created rapidly by literally dumping whole libraries of information, including both fact and fiction, into readiy searchable memory banks. Humans analysze and respond to events in real time influenced by external events and internal states such as motivation and emotion. Computers programmed for AI, on the other hand, perform a statistical analysis of the words most likely to occur next in the stream of words already used. Humans must react continuosly to multiple sources of change occurring in the environment in real time. AI computers respond to new words entered into the system at a later time. This only begins to sketch the differences between human and artificial intelligence. Humans amalyze and evaluate situations, computers statistically analyze word sequences. In an emergency, which will you trust?

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You caught me - I have no comment except the 'new' world of regurgitated information is scary. As I now am publishing material I have such concern for people like me who work so hard to create & then have it sucked into a digital land of 'who cares who did the work.' Very concerned.

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AI could have so many unintended consequences. Anyone remember "2001: A Space Odyssey "?

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The real lesson of 2001 isn't HAL the computer ... its the alien infection we received to our DNA that allowed the second wave of Hominids out of Africa 65,000 years ago (+/-) to take over the world with language. What's happening now is the maturation and emergence of that infection. We are cocoons and the UFOs watching us right now probably know that- if they didn't actually do this to us. Get ready for the "Star Child" ...

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Yes but there are far more intended unconsequences. The world is not the one that Pixel world will have us believe. It is more like the industries in the series "Gold Rush" where people produce million$ worth of products only with toil, sweat, and guile. The pixilated world can offer ideas/images/concepts but success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

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Some might find this hard to believe, but there is a world that exists separate from the pixel one. It will proceed, undeterred as it has since the beginning of time and yes, GIGO.

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I'm writing to simply share that I can't believe I am the first contributor on one of the valuable blogs!

Also, I simply do not have the band-with to be overly concerned with AI. We eat organic, drive EV and are active w our local county Dems group. These are my 'good works.' I appreciate everyones' good works around AI. But I don't know what they could be? Drive EV?

But, I am keenly interested in the upcoming VA state legislative races. We could win the legislature, or loose the entire state of VA to a far right slate, with its conservative governor

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The world has huge and small problems and all we can each do, as you are doing, is to live an ethical life.

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How wonderfully piquant if it turns out that our newest life-threatening menace should be overcome by our oldest institution (viz., our system of laws) and ordinary people pursuing their rights to their own property through the courts - the entire system based on theft, by people like the founders of Google who at the outset of their gigantic enterprise promised to “do no harm.” Eliezer Yudkowsky never thought of that solution, though I like him even more since learning he never even went to high school; now he’s been joined by highly-credentialed and equally articulate Geoffrey Hinton so things are looking up. But where are the multi-billionaires and their lesser brethren the billionaires? They are not speaking up, because when you become richer than many countries you change, you are no longer like the rest of us and your priorities are different; the aphorism “power corrupts” describes this process. I agree with you the typical American approach, so deeply ingrained, that ’the magic of the market’ will take of it, will fail; as brilliantly elaborated by Naomi Orestes in The Big Myth. Iain McGilchrist’s new book The Matter with Things is an elaborate discussion of our hemispheric brains and how AI is a function only the left hemisphere, which is why it’s on course to kill us.

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