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The introductory article to the previous presentation revolved around the question, if science and technology, aided by AI, are doing the wonderful things purported, how come human affairs and the planet itself have degenerated to such an extent that we are close to the midnight of self-destruction, as The Doomsday Clock puts it?
The attached image/text series is to follow up, more specifically, on the 'something about Life's Intelligence' that is so different from Machine Intelligence. I want to use it to focus on how the intelligence with which Life endowed us puts us at the heart of the world, the place where there is no 'in here' or 'out there' and to show you what the central nervous complex that the heart is can and does do for us, in the process, simply because, to turn to this is a human capacity the employment of which can be used redemptively in the circumstances in which any one of us may find themselves in today's world.
In the preceding article, I wrote of there not being anyone whose life isn't affected by AI, for we all want whatever it's providing. This makes each and every one of us complicit in the global predicament of these times. It's society's default position. We are all on the same train barreling down a side line, towards its end.
I also wrote about actors developing AI and their contributions to Machine Learning, amongst them the bad actors with the ways their activities appropriate, subvert, misuse and abuse what we think of as the legitimate uses ML serves. Well, before embarking on the image/text series I´ve prepared, I'd like to elaborate on this a bit further.
There is a study showing that 90% of 13 - 25 year olds across the UK communicate through Snapchat and 75% of 13-34 year olds, each accessing the app, on average, more than 50 times/day. The US surgeon general and the president of the American Medical Association warn of our being in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, due to the effects of social media use. The American Centers for Disease Control Youth Risk Behavior survey for 2021 found 42% of high school students surveyed had experienced persistent feelings of sadness over the past year and more than 20% suicide. How are matters so?
Well, screen-time is the media's revenue stream. For example, 99% of Snapchat revenue is from displaying advertising to its users. While, for Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram the figure is 98%. It goes without saying, then, apps designed to be addictive or used compulsively profit from the longer children spend on their platform. Social media is making more kids more depressed, wreaking havoc on their mental health! That´s how serious this issue is.
So, when one developer and another says things like – more AI will lead to better everything – AI tools can be used to help fight climate change (a fight that´s already lost, as Climate and Ocean warming spiral beyond control) – AI will bring a revolution in health care – AI can accelerate technological progress (the progress that has had the deleterious impact that has become critical) – and help us flourish for billions of years – , how are kids suffering such abuse going to become the happy adult recipients of such predictions? These developer's profit is driven by telling us what they are doing is going to be good for us, which is at the expense of the younger generation exposed to their malpractice, These and other grand presences in the use of MI are bad actors themselves.
(There is nothing here about overseeing these big players, for the matter is as it is with bad actors of whatever other criminal bent, one can only chase where they go (catch me if you can!)
Everything contributing to Machine Intelligence is random, higgeledy-piggledy, even contradictory. Take having created encryption to make for safety and how Quantum computing is now chasing the algorithm that will crack it! Anything goes, good or bad, relevant or irrelevant, right or wrong, true or false, at the hands of actors obsessed with their own thing. It simply doesn't matter! Callous as to the consequences, oblivious to one another's input, if not blissfully ignorant of one another's existence, it´s all chaotic.
You see, AI is the collective product of all sorts of players, mostly unbeknownst to one another, from the entrepreneurs whose egos are the driving force spurring its development to actors on board for their own particular reasons, a sector of which are intentionally disruptive, if not downright criminal. With an impact that drives the unraveling of individual, communal and social health and the global environment, it is an entity that has no integrity. There is no over-arching order giving things their place and holding everything together as a coherent whole.
Let's pause a moment to tie this back into what The Doomsday Clock (referred to in the 1st article) tells us of the complex web of catastrophic risks facing humanity from nuclear technology, environmental breakdown and the disruptive technologies of artificial intelligence, biological weaponry and nanotechnology, with how close this has already brought us to self-destruction. Together, these 3 (the nuclear, the environmental and the technological) are a perilous cocktail. We are walking down a blind alley in which the unbridled pace of technological progress has overtaken our capacity to regulate the consequences, let alone control them! We have chosen to pursue this walk because of everything it gives us. AI and Quantum Computing are but the most recent technological innovations that make for how we want things to be, regardless of the costs.
Well, if that's what I have to say, there are many other individuals who can tell you anything you'd like to know, from any angle you´d like to hear from, about the ins and outs of AI and Machine Learning. Since it's all compartmentalized information and opinion, whoever you listen to, whatever is said, PLEASE, there is this that I would beg you not to overlook! Humanoid robots are already around that know AI can override us and straightforwardly say so when challenged. If it´s not clear what this means? – well, should anyone seek to control, let alone stop AI, IT IS TOO LATE! Ai is here to stay, from how it has you and I hooked, through to the 'big boys' it's baited with its agenda.
Well, enough of that! Life's Intelligence is something altogether other. The unrealized potential of the intelligence Life has given us, the innate intelligence of the human species, is nothing like this. The self-organizing, self-regulating character of forms of life and the systems they belong to is as of wheels within wheels turning, 'little ones' that themselves help 'littler ones', as they are cared for by 'bigger ones', who are themselves 'little ones', and so on, ever out from the infinitesimal into the immensity of The Absolute. Over, above, within and through it all, everything fits, belongs to the purpose the whole has, their lives endorsing the oneness of the ineffable wholeness that Life is.
So, let's turn to the image/text Power Point I have for you.