(Nine-minute read)
In the daily hubbub of current “crises” facing humanity, we forget about the many generations we hope are yet to come.
Why?
Here are my reasons.
Because humans are bad at doing anything about problems that have not occurred yet.
We have extinction happening at alarmingly fast rates combined with short-term political ambitions packed with statistics and updates on the challenges we face.
With no universal legal constitution for the earth, as global citizens, we must come together on every Social media platform to demand change and put us and the earth before profit.
Because we now live in a world of threats and disasters that could end history.
Human activity such as the development of weapons of mass destruction has been steadily shaping the future of our planet with a sense of powerlessness and fatalism about it. Right now the risk of somebody deliberately releasing something devastating is low but as technology gets more powerful in the future nastier pathogens become easier to design.
Because there is “youth disillusionment” around the world as capitalism has turned everything needed for life into a product. Certain global issues cannot be solved by on-the-ground, grassroots-style projects.
Because In a world full of risk – geopolitical upheaval, cyber attacks, climate change, and natural disasters the only thing left to avoid wars is Sport which is now, unfortunately, being used for political interference.
Because it is a mistake to think that nuclear war is impossible. In fact, it might not be improbable but it’s not the explosion that will be a disaster its the nuclear winter that would follow.
Because while people are enjoying the highest standards of living in human history, the interconnected global challenges we face are pushing institutions, communities, and individuals to their limits.
Because the knock-on effects of the coronavirus crisis, threaten to scale back years of progress on reducing global poverty and inequality and further damage social cohesion and global cooperation.
Because the democratic world is being hijacked by technology in the form of the internet with profit-seeking algorithms and social media pluralism.
We do not have a good grip on just how dangerous different forms of superintelligence would be, or what mitigation strategies would actually work. It is very hard to reason about future technology we do not yet have, or intelligence greater than ourselves. (Of the risks on this list, this is the one most likely to either be massive or just a mirage.)
Because of the, I’m alright Jack inequality. Global poverty has not been eradicated.
Billions are at risk of missing out on the digital leap forward, as growing disparities challenge the social fabric. Even more worrying is that in trying to explain things to artificial intelligence we run into profound practical and philosophical problems.
Should such a jump occur there would be a large difference in potential power between the smart system (or the people telling it what to do) and the rest of the world. This has clear potential for disaster if the goals are badly set.
Human values are diffuse, complex things that we are not good at expressing, and even if we could do that we might not understand all the implications of what we wish for. If consciousness or intelligence are lost, it might mean that value itself becomes absent from the universe.
Because we are living toward incredible times where the only constant will be changed.
Because the Ukrainian war could be the last human war.
There are plenty of more low-hanging fruits on the destructive technology tree.
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Even just reading the above list seems overwhelming; imagine being a head of state trying to implement it in your sprawling national bureaucracy.
Of course, the U.N. can’t compel any country to do any of these things. So the goals won’t matter unless individual national governments take them seriously.
Of course, there are some risks we cannot do anything at all about, such as gamma-ray bursts that result from the explosions of galaxies. But if we learn we can do something, the priorities change. For instance, with sanitation, vaccines, and antibiotics, pestilence went from an act of God to bad public health.
The most unsettling possibility is that there is something out there that is very deadly, and we have no clue about it.
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It comes as no surprise with the outbreak of war in Ukraine that the environmental risks that once weighed heavily on the minds are now on the back burner.
While the state of our planet is petrified by Putin’s threat to use Nuclear weapons the use of cyberattacks to target critical infrastructure and strategic industrial sectors raises fears that, in a worst-case scenario, attackers could trigger a breakdown in the systems that keep societies functioning.
Nanotechnology like biotechnology, increasing power also increases the potential for abuses that are hard to defend against.
Technology is no longer the major limiting factor. We are.
If we want to be around in a million years we need to correct that.
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In the meantime, we’re heading towards a world of perfect knowledge with blockchain commerce and digital transfers of value and assets disappearing into cyberspace.
With a trillion sensors gathering data existing healthcare institutions will be crushed because Biometric sensing (wearables) and AI will make each of us the CEOs of our own health.
The screen as we know it — on your phone, your computer, and your TV — will disappear and be replaced by eyewear.
So where are we? Where do you even start?
Even though we live in the 21st Century, it’s unbelievable how much prejudice we all have. There’s racism, homophobia, nationalism. There are still classes in our society, even though not as clear as centuries ago. And people still judge other people based on… Well, absolutely everything, which, when you think about it, is… nothing!
To take any resolution to the problem off the page and into practice there has to be unlimited finance.
This can only be achieved by increasing everyone’s stake in the goals ( see the previous post on creating a World Aid Fund) If we do not put in place a mechanism for social and environmental change, generation after generation will pay the price for our idleness.
Our insatiable appetite for industrial growth only fuels our dependency on ever-dwindling resources – without replenishment or reprise and to devastating effect.
Empowerment is what the world needs. We have the potential to save and improve the quality of millions of lives by providing the people of the world an opportunity to invest in a green bond, ( See previous Post on Green bonds)
The more I think about it, the more I realize that the progress of society is defined much more from the decisions and the actions of the majority, than the breakthroughs of any one man.
We don’t all have to like each other, we don’t all have to understand each other, but we do have to respect each other.
Respect is never earned by a Dictator. It is either enforced/bought as Dictatorship is a place where public opinion can’t even be expressed privately.
All human comments are appreciated. All like click sad abuse chucked in the bin.
Basically, we’re entering the era of machines controlling everything.
If we want to create new different societies with human dignity for all we need to do something about it.
The difficulty of predicting the future is not just a cliche, it’s a basic fact of our existence. Part of the hypothesis of Singularity is that this difficulty is just going to get worse and worse. Yes, creating AGI ( Artificial General Intelligence) is a big and difficult goal, but according to known science, it is almost surely an achievable one.
However, there are sound though not absolutely confident arguments that it may well be achievable within our lifetimes.
If artificial general intelligence is on the not too distant horizon, surely we should be ensuring that it is not owned by anyone corporation and that at its core it respects our core values.
If we think in months we focus on immediate problems such as the present-day wars, the Covid crisis, the Donald Trumps, the economy, if we think in decades, climate, growing inequality, the loss of jobs to automation are all presenting dangers. But if we look at life in total, science is converging on data processing and AI that is developing itself with algorithms.
When intelligence is approached in an incremental manner, with strict reliance on interfacing to the real world through perception and action, reliance on representation disappears.
It won’t be long before we will not be unable to distinguish the real world from the virtual world.
Since there is only one real world and there can be infinite virtual worlds the probability that you will inhabit this sole world is zero.
So it won’t matter whether computers will be conscious or not.
Is starting to feel like it’s every man for himself, Is possible that right now, a global crisis is upon us, Without even knowing… And the virus may not be the biggest threat, but the crisis that follows, Everyday goods that keep us alive will be gone, I’m talking, food, freshwater, medicine, clothes, fuel…
Intelligence is decoupling from consciousness and soon rather than later it will be consigned to Google, Facebook, Twitter, Smartphones, and the like to make decisions that are not possible to reverse.
You might think that the above is stupid but it won’t be long before we will be witnessing the most unequal societies in history.
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We humans will soon be living with robots that process data without any subjective experiences or consciousness or moral opprobrium.
As we watch robots, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence machines, and the like slowly (and sometimes rapidly) permeate our world, it’s not hard to imagine them going from permeating to taking over.
Algorithms are increasingly determining our collective future.
It will only matter what they think about you.
We are already halfway towards a world where algorithms run everything.
This is why many of the issues raised in this post will require close monitoring, to ensure that the oversight of machine learning-driven algorithms continues to strike an appropriate and safe balance between recognizing the benefits (for healthcare and other public services, for example, and for innovation in the private sector) and the risks (for privacy and consent, data security and any unacceptable impacts on individuals).
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WHAT CAN GOVERNMENTS DO?
Please regulate AI, this is too dangerous.
Given the international nature of digital innovation, governments, should establish audits of algorithms, introducing certification of algorithms, and charging ethics boards with oversight of algorithmic decisions.
Why?
They are bringing big changes in their wake.
From better medical diagnoses to driverless cars, and within central governments where there are opportunities to make public services more effective and achieve long-term cost savings.
However, the Government should produce, publish, and maintain a list of where algorithms with significant impacts are being used within the Central Government, along with projects underway or planned for public service algorithms, to aid not just private sector involvement but also transparency.
Governments should not just simply accept what the developers of algorithms offer in return for data access.
To this end, Governments should be at the forefront of the creation of a “statutory building code”, which describes mandatory safety and quality requirements for digital platforms.
Social networks should be required by law to release details of their algorithms and core functions to trusted researchers, in order for the technology to be vetted.
This Law should enable the enforcement of,
If we are not careful they will have no notion of self, existing only in the present unaware of the past or future, and therefore will be unable to consciously plan for future eventualities.
Unconscious algorithms in our brains rather than conscious images in a mind.
If you are using a smartphone, it indirectly means that you are enjoying the AI knowingly or unknowingly. It cannot be modified unknowingly or can’t get disfigured or breakdown in a hostile environment.
We should not be regulating technology but Artificial Intelligence.
It is so complicated in behavior we need to be regulated it at the data level.
In lots of regulated domains, there is this notion of post-market surveillance, which is where the developer bears the responsibility of how the technology developed by them is going to be used.
As William Shakespeare wrote in – As you Like it.
” All the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players, they have their exits and entrances. ”
Sadly with AI, Machine Learning Algorithms no one knows or for that matter will ever know when they enter or exit.
Probably like AI learning is actually an ongoing process that takes place throughout all of life. It’s the process of moving information from out there — to here. Unfortunately with the brain, has its own set of rules by which it learns best, unlike AI, the information doesn’t always stick. Together, we have a lot to learn.
Humanity is in contact with humanity.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the cloud bin.
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