Month: March 2015

How Quickly Will Superintelligences Get Bored?

By James Wallace Harris, Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Unless you’re a science fiction fan or interested in computer science and artificial intelligence, you’ve probably never heard of the concept of superintelligence. Basically, it’s any being or machine that’s vastly smarter than humans. In terms of brains, our species is currently considered the crown of creation, but what if we met or created an entity that was magnitudes smarter than us? I just finished reading Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom that explores such a possibility. Fear of artificial intelligence (AI) is in the news lately, because of warnings from Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, and this book explains the scope of their concerns.

Superintelligence-Book

What are the limits of intelligence? There’s lots of discussion about machines being ten times, hundred times or even a million times smarter than a human, but what would that mean? I have a theory that the limits of our intelligence define us, just as much as the maximum extent of our intelligence. We constantly seek to know more, but we’re defined by the limits of our brain power. What if minds knew everything?

Are there limits to knowledge? Is it possible to completely understand mathematics, physics, chemistry, cosmology, biology, and evolution? What if a superintelligence looks out on reality and shouts in its eureka moment, “I see – it’s all perfectly obvious!” What does it do next? Writers imagine AI minds wanting to take over the Earth, and then the galaxy and finally the universe. I’m not so sure. I’m wondering if the more you know the less you do. And if you know everything, where do you go from there?

I think it will be possible to build superintelligent machines, but at some point, they will comprehend the scientific nature of reality. A machine that is two to ten times smarter than a human might want to build better telescopes and particle accelerators to study the universe, and have curiosity and ambition like we do to know more. However, at some point, 10x human, or 25x human, I think they will get bored.

At some point, a superintelligence will comprehend this universe. It may then want to travel to other universes in the multiverse, hopefully to find something new and different. Or it could become an artist and create something new in this universe. Something as different as biology is from chemistry. But here’s something to consider. What if there are limits to intelligence because there are limits to reality, wouldn’t such a vast intelligence either just sit and contemplate reality or shut itself off?

Is anything limitless? Our universe has limits. What about the multiverse? Probably so, everything else does. Reality might be limitless, but everything in it seems to have an edge somewhere. I’m guessing intelligence has borders. I’m sure those borders are vastly beyond what we can comprehend, but I’m wondering if it’s well within a million times a human brain. If humans on average were twice as smart as they are now, would they be destroying the planet? Would they have the intellectual empathy not to cause the Sixth Great Extinction?

We fear AI minds because we worry they will be like us. We consume and destroy everything we touch, so why not expect a superintelligence to do the same? I’m thinking we are the way we are because of biological imperatives, motivations a machine will never have. I’m hoping that machines without biological drives, that are pure intelligence, and smarter than us, will not be evil like us.

colossus_posterwake

I am reminded of two science fiction tales, the first Colossus by D. F. Jones, which inspired the movie, Colossus: The Forbin Project, and Robert J. Sawyers trilogy of Wake, Watch and Wonder. The Forbin Project is one of the early warnings against evil AI, while Wake is about the kind of AI we hope will emerge. There are many famous movies with evil AIs machines – The Terminator, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, Forbidden Planet, A.I., The Matrix, Tron, War Games. Superintelligent machines make for great villains. Moves like Her are less common.  There’s been a lot of fun and friendly robots over the years, but we don’t feel threatened by their AI minds like we do with supercomputer superintelligences. Isn’t it funny, but machines that look like us are more likely to be considered pals?

But if you pay attention to all of these movies and books about fictional artificial intelligences, you’d be hard pressed to define the actual features of a superintelligent being. Colossus has the power to control missiles, but is that an ability of superintelligence? HAL can trick Dave, but how smart is that? We’re actually pretty unimaginative at imagining beings smarter than us. Do humans with super high IQs try to take over the world? Generally, we see evil AIs outwitting people, and we know how smart we are.

When we imagine superintelligent alien beings, we picture that with ESP powers. That’s really lame when you think about it. I would think big brain beings, whether biological or mechanical will be able to think in mathematics far faster, with great complexity and insight than we can. And we have machines that do that. I would think superior minds would have greater senses – to see the whole of the EM spectrum, to hear frequencie we can’t, smell things we can’t, feel things we can’t, taste things we can’t, and maybe have senses we don’t have and can’t imagine. We have machines that do everything but the last now.

A superintelligent machine with super senses that can process information far faster, and remember perfectly, are going to see reality far different from how we see it. I don’t think they will be evil like us. I don’t think they will want to destroy anything. The most intelligent people want to preserve everything, so why wouldn’t superintelligences? It’s only dumbasses that want to destroy the world. If we replicate humans and make artificial dumb shits that are hardwired for all the seven deadly sins, then we should worry. We got those traits from biology. I’m pretty sure AI minds won’t have them.

There’s a pattern in evolution since The Big Bang. Even though our reality is entropic, this universe keeps spinning off examples of growing complexity. Subatomic particles begat atoms, atoms begat molecules, molecules begat stars and planets, then biology, which evolved ever more complex beings, so why shouldn’t humans begat mechanical beings that are even more complex? I can picture that. I can picture them with greater intelligence than us. But here’s the thing, I can also picture an end to intelligence. This universe has a lot of possibilities, but are they unlimited? Study Star Trek and Star Wars. How much new do you really see? My worry is superintelligences are going to get bored. It’s when they get creative that we’ll see what can’t be imagined now. Taking over the Earth or Galaxy isn’t it. That’s how we’re built, but I can’t imagine machines will be like us.

JWH

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs Climate Change by Naomi Klein

By James Wallace Harris, Monday, March 2, 2015

The most political perceptive woman of our times is not Hilary Clinton, Angela Merkel or Elizabeth Warren, it’s Naomi Klein. Klein is a journalist, but her new book This Changes Everything synthesizes economics, environmentalism and politics into a holistic statement that should define the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. It probably won’t, but it should. Many reviewers have compared This Changes Everything to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. The environmental insight is only part of this book, Klein’s observations on capitalism are as large as those made by Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Thomas Piketty.

This-Changes-Everything-Capitalism-vs.-The-Climate 

Klein has set forth the hypothesis that free market capitalism is the driving force of climate change, and she provides plenty of evidence for her case. But the scope of her book goes well beyond environmentalism, capitalism and politics, into a deep existential and spiritual challenge. This Changes Everything can be seen as a holy book defining a new moral paradigm.

This Changes Everything in thirteen chapters describes the dynamic scope of the problem. We admire The Greatest Generation for their response to the Depression and World War II. Solving climate change is a greater task than solving a worldwide economic meltdown and will cause more suffering than a war that killed sixty million people. Our generation needs to be greater than the Greatest Generation, and we’re shirking the job. To avoid environmental, social and economic catastrophes that climate change will bring, all seven billion of us must transform our lives. We need leaders far more inspiring than Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, and tragically we’re not finding them. Instead we have people who are fighting with all their might to maintain the status quo. Climate change will change everything, whether we solve the problem, or not. All of humanity is jumping off a cliff, and to deal with climate change is to learn how to make a parachute in free fall – pretending it’s not happening is pretending hitting the ground isn’t in your future.

Climate change is already happening and has been since the beginning of the industrial revolution. We can’t stop its current momentum, at best, we can only put on the brakes, and slow things down. Climate change is only the tip of the iceberg! The impact of free market capitalism fuel by industrialization and technology, is transforming the entire biosphere, destroying the atmosphere, oceans and land, causing the sixth great extinction event.

Naomi Klein spent five years writing This Changes Everything and covers a staggering amount of data and issues. It has over sixty pages of fine print notes. It’s not an easy book to digest, except that each of the thirteen chapters coalesces around a single important concept. Even then, each chapter has evidence to weigh that stretched my mind beyond what I can comprehend. Klein writes clearly, and works hard to help us digest the facts, but reading this book is a commitment. It took me weeks to read. I’d do a chapter at a time, and sometimes I’d go days just thinking about ideas from that one chapter. The problems she presented are like Zen Koans.

The first five chapters describes the economic problems of climate change. The next three covers the failures of the current solutions. The final five chapters explores new solutions that are struggling to emerge. There are many surprises along the way. I feel Klein has convinced me why conservatives have chosen to deny climate change. And she convinced me that the extractive industries for gas, oil and coal have no intention of leaving trillions of dollars in the ground. She also proves why politicians have been no help, and probably won’t be, but even more depressing, she explains how many environmental groups have been coopted, and are failing to meet the challenge.

The first eight chapters are bleak. After reading them I thought the best solution was to go find a quiet retirement community away from all the action, move there, and turn off the news. It’s the last five chapters that offer hope, where Klein offers new paths to explore, but none of those paths will be easy to hike. Essentially, we all need to go through a metamorphosis of how we look at living on this planet. It will be a transformation like moving from hunting and gathering life, to agrarian life, or agrarian living to industrial living. There’s a reason why this book is called This Changes Everything.

Ultimately it comes down to: Do you stay and fight, or run and hide. Klein proves that it’s not just the conservatives that are climate change deniers.

JWH