(…) With AI and genetic engineering I see a very dark horizont ahead of us. (The corona virus was just a really harmless demo of what could be waiting for us.)
Progress in computing is not filling me with fear. What worries me, is that kind of a mindset. I know of no creature more dangerous and destructive than scared humans.
Speaking of which, the smortnet situation triggers my curiosity not for technical reasons,(1) but from social, philosophical and psychological perspectives. The element most interesting in all this is a human and human society. I think I already posted that somewhere, but I suggest two movies:- The Heavenly Creature (2012), a part of “Doomsday Book” triptych, not to be confused with Jackson’s movie: depicting tension between two perceptions of a machine, working in a buddhist monastery, which started acting as an enlightened human. More current than ever. Better than anything showing, how I feel now, watching the smortnet hitting public.
- Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970): seen as a member of the “evil AI” trope, to me this picture makes a strong philosophical statement about humans and your morality. A stunning depiction an ethical equivalent of the paperclip maximizer, exposing inherent incoherence of human ethics.
(1) That part is something I went through in late 2000s. My degree thesis was meant to be in autonomous robot swarms.
If I understand you right, you mean that my mentality is the problem? While I agree generally, that scared(or rather panicked) people do generally stupid things, that in itself is not a counterargument to what I said. (wrote.)
Also the incoherences in practical human moral and its negative aspects is in itself is not an argument for a world not being able to be much worse with strong and not so strong AIs.
Probably at some point. I suspect it will be like VR in the 90s, all the rage, going to revolutionize the world
Or computer chess in the 1960s - if the machine can do something that's the domain of the smartest of humans then it must be going to take over...
As I said it is not just the taking over scenario. Look at the spam on the internet, which is a result of a much lower level programming, and still it makes a lot of harm on the net, and makes very useful information hidden much more than it was 10 years before, and also steering people towards monopol plattforms.
And most importantly makes it every day more difficult to filter out useful information from the spam and rumors.
Or the effect of some uncontrolled social media algorithm, against which human society to start to react (and to realize its efets) took years.
Or just giving small children a smartphone and net access just because we can, and than start to wonder why so many children have much more anxiety etc. than the had 4-5 years before.
If these kind of changes are hapening on a faster scale than the society could accomodate to them, than it will go faster and faster in direction chaos, or because of some panic reactions towards totalitarian systems. Freedom of speach is already practically questioned even in western socieies, to not to talk about the rest, especially China which was turned into a digital dystopia.
And the changes are getting faster and faster.