The AI genie has already been released from the bottle and there is no way to get it back in. The relationship between the perception of intelligence and thinking is no longer straightforward. Robotic systems continue to evolve, slowly penetrating many areas of our lives, from manufacturing, medicine and remote exploration to entertainment, security and personal assistance.

If we are not careful we are all just becoming food:  Called Data.

If the field of artificial intelligence (AI) continues to develop at its current dizzying rate, the singularity could come about in the middle of the present century. So we are left with a couple of decades to re-set the brave new world of artificial intelligence.

Whether you believe that singularity is near or far, likely or impossible, apocalypse or utopia, the very idea raises crucial philosophical and pragmatic questions, forcing us to think seriously about what we want as a species.

While we all stand by in silence, AI is only getting better, as computational intelligence techniques keep on improving, becoming more accurate and faster due to giant leaps in processor speeds.

Regardless of how artificial intelligence develops in the years ahead, almost all pundits agree that the world will forever change as a result of advances in AI.

The singularity presents both an existential threat to humanity and an existential opportunity for humanity to transcend its limitations.

We are entering a period of what I call Non Synergistic Evolution. (SE)

This period requires a species to be aided in its evolutionary process by another species. We are the guinea pigs species feeding AI with data which will act as the food or fuel that allows those higher up the chain to exist and evolve. Once this happens, with the evolution of some very clever tools, weapons, and body parts Ai will become an integral part of the human species tree creating … a new branch on the tree of evolution.

To avoid all of us becoming obsolete we need to create an extension of the human branch and not AI that exploits us which will give us a world with inequalities in every form that you can think of.

The fact that our behaviour can radically change without a shift in either explicit or implicit motivations—with no deliberate decision to refocus—seems insidious for the future of mankind.

Instead of emphasizing formal operations on abstract symbols, I suggests that thinking beings ought be considered first and foremost as acting beings.  As such we need to radically change the education of the next generation

The fact that most real-world thinking occurs in very particular (and often very complex) environments, is employed for very practical ends, and exploits the possibility of interaction with and manipulation of external props will never be understood by AI. It will be ignored.

Reason is evolutionary, We, like all animals, are essentially embodied agents, and our powers of advanced cognition vitally depend on a substrate of abilities for moving around in and coping with the world which we inherited from our evolutionary forbears.

Thinking beings ought therefore be considered first and foremost as acting beings, NOT DATA, as it will not be long before we may find ourselves losing individual opportunities for decision-making, as the agency of our collectives become stronger, and their norms therefore more tightly enforced.

THERE IS NO ROOM FOR COMPLACENCY.

Food is being genetically modified and humans will follow suit.  Is it to feed the world or for profit.

Whatever the next step is to be in human cognitive progress, it ought to be based on a better and more thorough understanding of intelligence than we have so far managed.

Humans and human society have so far proved exceptionally resilient, presumably because of our individual, collective and prosthetic intelligence.

But what we know about social behaviour indicates significant policy priorities are required.  If we want to maintain flexibility, we should maintain variation in our populations. If we want to maintain variation and independence in individual citizens’ behaviour, then we should protect their privacy and even anonymity.

I just don’t see why it is that anyone would want to live for ever, in a world that is governed by voice recognition. Where you know nobody, and are monitored to see what you are up to.

The potential of Artificial Intelligence is enormous and in fact a 2013 study by Oxford University estimated that Artificial Intelligence could take over nearly half of all jobs in the United States in the near future.

The global workforce would have to transform.

Perhaps the biggest unanswered question is: Will there be enough good jobs to keep the global economy growing? After all, AI systems aren’t consumers and consumers are the sine qua non of economic growth.

Social power is one of the most pervasive social concepts in human societies because of its function as a social heuristic for decision-making.

Re-conception of human cognition has implications not just for the project of creating artificial intelligence, but for the related project of harnessing computation to enhance human intelligence.

AI is changing what collective agencies like governments, corporations and neighbourhoods can do. Algorithms ‘learn’ from past not from the future.

They may well relieve engineers of the need to write out every command, but when they manipulate the Stock Exchange for profit, determine whether you are a viable risk or not, they are encroaching in areas of life that effect all of us. 

If automation keeps going at the sped it is, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push button finger. It is crucial vision alone which can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic.

The ultimate vindication of AI-creativity would be a program that generated novel ideas which initially perplexed or even repelled us, but which was able to persuade us that they were indeed valuable. We are a very long way from that.

Now is the time to establish a New World Organisation to vet all technology. ( See previous posts)

All comments appreciated, all push button likes, chucked in the bin.