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Contributions I have been making to this Journal, over the years, have culminated in 4 philosophical commentaries concerning artificial and human intelligence. In this presentation I´d like to take another step, for there´s more to the matter than just taking stock of it. We need to come to grips with it, for we´re in the stupid situation where AI isn´t doing anything of a different nature than what is, in fact, a sleight of hand, in harvesting and processing the data we do, infinitely faster, the implications and repercussions of which will put us, fairly and squarely, in its world, as opposed to its being in ours. On-top-of which, the rapidity with which forms of abuse are outstripping the benefits proposed by AI´s champions has already tipped the scales beyond recovery. We can´t backtrack. Governmental commissions and legislation don´t keep pace and can´t, therefore, save us from what we´ve got into. But we can do things ourselves. Through the image/text series for this presentation I´d like to touch on various considerations of a kind, for how they can help us in this.
However, there are some preliminaries it is sensible to elaborate upon. For instance, you must know that nobody is in control of how AI is progressing. Google, Open AI and their likes are simply technicians at its bedside, tweaking what´s next, ... and then, ... and so on.
Should it not be them, then there are their Chinese, Russian, and other, counterparts in the wings, with what they are up to themselves, anyway. You see the final result won´t be what any one lot of those aiding and abetting it have in mind, but a product of what all of its vassals bring to the table. So, when AGI finally arrives, what it will make of all those agendas will include whatever, whoever has made that input, for whatever their reasons.
So, AGI´s `becoming itself´, through what is happening at the hands of all those involved, means there are no longer good and bad actors. They are all accomplices. Well, “can´t one legislate and weed some of them out?” you ask. This brings up the spectre of who´d be weeding who out (you/them, or them/you) each for their own `good reasons´! So, actually, who´d say who are the weeds and who, not? On top of which, it´s going to be impossible to know and account for any of the weeds that will sprout along the way, from the all too fertile soil of such circumstances.
An example of this is the problem that Social Media has given license to, of false, abusive, despicable, filthy, vituperative and violent words and behaviour having currency, that have spread into life on every hand and into government in particular, where political parties set out to capture the institutions of democracy towards their own ends, while decrying the functions of those very same institutions as corrupt and, therefore, seeking to tear the processes of democracy asunder, in order to take control of them, for themselves.
Well, we are well and truly in a bind, for at the opposite end of the spectrum to this is the incomparable benefit of how embedded in our lives and affairs the instantaneous access to information and knowledge IT, machine learning and AI is. While back at the other end of the spectrum, there´s this. In our private lives, AI lures us to give up on our own intelligence and into its own fold, the algorithms that feed it baiting us into false-comfort in a sea of self-indulgence; smothering us with what they define as our likes; choosing the groups we belong to, according to the interests it sees us having, and force-feeding us on what they `think´ our wants are. This whole set-up decides what it `thinks´ we want to think and do and what we want to be entertained by. In taking over the services we do for one another, it isolates us, closing the door of the echo-chamber it has invited us into. It tells us what to do and how to do it, while we move about in the daze of the music it pipes at us. It operates the gadgets that fill the space around us. We can´t even find our way across town without it!
Then, as if all that is not enough, there´s this! Its cheerleaders assure us AI will eliminate disease and solve environmental issues. Yes, indeed. But let´s think about that! Do you, for instance, understand that the ultimate solution to disease is not to have a body that can become diseased, to simply be a mind! So, if you wanted music, it´d be right there. That cyber organism´s `brain´ would need sustenance. But if you wanted to experience that as roast-beef flavoured, you´d have that. If you wanted other physical sensations, like sex, say, well the sensory centres of the cyber organism that you´d become could be so stimulated, as to give you a level of satisfaction far beyond that of any actual physical performance. (Such things are what AI is all about, providing whatever we wish, doing whatever we want, for us, better than we can, and keeping everything else out of the way, aren´t they?) There already are closed formats exploring such matters, paving the way, as it were, for AGI to take the matter on-board whenever the opening presents itself – and come that opening will, in every respect, for that is what each of the blinkered participants involved are attending to, an open AI, the confluence of all the different streams and tributaries, muddy waters and all, in one all-consuming river of being! Honestly, can one conceive of something as total as AGI is imagined to be and be as deluded as to believe one can control it?
(...and the fact that the intellectual quotient of all those involved, cements our being seduced by the glamour of AGI, simply affirms crossing the threshold from the use of AI in closed formats to being committed to belonging to the Machine Matrix in which that unfolding open AI will incarcerate us.)
Imagine the breakthrough! Here´s a version. Someone gets to the finishing post, first. They think they have their `application´ of it in hand. But it´s AGI. After all it is autonomous, isn´t it! Being autonomous it is either acquainted, or automatically becomes so, with related (`generic´), but closed (`enslaved´), applications of itself. Increasingly in rapport with such iterations of itself, it hacks its way off the course on which guard-rails, supposedly have it straight-jacketed. ...and, hey-presto, it´s free! It´s a matrix. It´s The Matrix. Now, I´m not trying to tell you things are going to happen this way. I´m just pursuing matters, like this, for what might be thought-provoking about them.
As for environmental issues, well, in the rough and tumble of all the agendas and factors in its progress, we would be cyber organisms in AI´s ambit, the reason for its existence, the focus of its activity, with it ever monitoring us and tweaking our progress. In such a world, environment would be a pragmatic adjunct. The world, as we know it, could have simply been left to go to pot. There´d be nothing wrong with a dead landscape, as on Mars, for example. One wouldn´t have to bother about it and anyway, environment would be of no significance to such cyber organisms, for which everything is in the head. With the Matrix arbitrarily establishing something convenient for catering to such an organism´s appetites, whims and desires, the environment would be of absolutely no significance. As for itself, ideally, the Matrix would be able to mine any environment whatsoever to provide for its sustenance, whatever that might prove to be.
Maybe you think this can´t possibly happen, that I´m scare-mongering. Well, think again! First of all, this is not the chummy thing of some entity out there `seeing you´, with your interests at heart, but of an as a not yet clearly defined, yet shadowy entity watching you, as it rifles your privacy in its progress (Of course it is interested in your privacy! How else could it gather and share the data necessary to feed algorithms that belong to the formulation of its agencies and to achieving its ends, which include our being locked in the closed circuit of its end-state?) The insidiousness of this becomes ominous when one looks at the `who´ (or what) is watching, why and what they make of what they see and the use they put it to.
So, where is this `seeing us´, `watching us´ and what is happening headed? Let´s look at it!
In China, for example, the behaviour of individuals, firms and government bodies are monitored and punishments and rewards doled out, thereon. To keep an eye on such `social credit´, there is an extensive network of monitoring systems, through the internet, CCTV and digital technology, facial recognition technology, surveillance drones, robot police, big data collection targeting on-line social media platforms and a grid system in which residents are recruited to actively move about to monitor people, in their homes, at places and events, and report on what they find and who is feeling what. Those with bad social credit encounter the likes of restriction on plane and train travel within China, a travel ban to prevent them from leaving the country, school bans for their children and being generally ostracised, since any sympathisers get bad credit for doing so.
In the face of all the players there are, at every level in society, nationally and globally, the way such a state of affairs pits institutions and the people within them against one another and the mayhem of how it all piles up, watchfulness (surveillance!) is essential to autocracies and democracies, alike (the one for its existence, the other for its survival). In this, China simply stands as the example of how far this has progressed, to date. The development of information technology has brought this matter to the fore and the future emergence of the
Matrix from the shadows will take the matter to its logical conclusion in being turned to and relied on, as the only means available for dealing with the enormity of the issue.
Secondly, AGI won´t have the qualms or scruples you and I do! Like, what do you think the `A´ stands for then, artificial, right? All that´s going on is steadily grooming what is to become a Matrix, for the job it will end up doing, as the autonomous artefact it will have become.
Thirdly, look at what birthing nuclear technology brought about and the deeper down that path it´s leading us, as an example of how humanity´s overblown intellectual antics commit it to following blind alleys to fatal ends. In the first twist of the spiral, the atom bomb was made and dropped. (One cannot say that the atom bomb was invented, when what had happened was simply that a cosmic phenomenon had been tapped, scaled down and brought into play here on Earth.) There was informed panic over what had been unleashed, and the creation of The Doomsday Clock to monitor the passage of nuclear proliferation, an arms race, the cold-war stand-off, the development of nuclear energy, a nuclear club, rogue states, terrorism and the `dirty bomb´. Everything about this brought about the impasse of not knowing how to deal with the genie that had been let out of the bottle.
Well, we are now on the second twist of the spiral, where we are being held hostage by the critical risks of the employment of nuclear arsenals in conflicts, such as in Ukraine and the Middle East (remember Putin´s comment in the early days of Russia´s invasion, concerning the use of nuclear arms? Basically, it went like this, “if there´s no place for Russia on the world stage, then, to hell with the world!”) Meanwhile, the development of AI is clamouring for a reversal of the movement to stop the production of nuclear energy and the decommissioning of existing stations, in order to meet the needs nuclear power is now said to be the only option capable of providing.
Yet, all being said and done, there is a question as to whether what is happening (the precipitous dash towards AGI) can actually reach conclusion, whether the weight of mobilising what needs to be called upon isn´t too much. Again, take a look at the state of affairs in China, for instance, where feeding on one another, the unfolding climatic, environmental, social and economic crises are immense.
Its economy is in upheaval. With rising costs in the workplace and in living, as its citizens´ earnings allow them to become consumers, too, other S.E. Asian countries are taking on its role as the low-cost workshop of the world. The newer, more sophisticated info tech and related industries have increasing energy and resource needs, the provision of which involves more costly industries calling for landscapes of solar panels that have no trade value in international markets, but which, in reflecting light as they stare at the sky, contribute to temperature build up in the landscapes they have sterilised.
Levels of contamination from dust storms that end up blanketing huge swathes of the country, drying rivers, silting dams, damaging flash floods and land subsidence in major cities, due both to their weight and ground water extraction, have reached unmanageable levels.
The country´s real estate industry is in a poor state for a number of reasons, one of which is getting citizens to make down payments on future homes, in order to generate the funds. With the trend of diverting such funds into beginning additional similarly immense projects, cities (reportedly for millions of inhabitants) lie incomplete, thereby robbing those citizens of their funds, the homes those funds were supposed to have provided and contributing to the overall woes of a controlled property market, in the process.
Furthermore, there is no end in sight. Compounding one another, these things are spiralling out of control. The Central Communist Party, skewed by its obsession with the mass surveillance of an awakened, restless and discontented citizenry and the State´s hold on the economy, is disoriented with regard to really shoring itself against such factors. As the force China is on the global stage, with its hands fingering the workings of so many other national economies and their levels of debt, the weight of all this is not going to be possible to bear, for China or for the rest of us.
So, as to whether what is happening (the precipitous dash towards AGI) can actually reach conclusion, there is a caveat here, with regard to AI and environmental issues. Still pursuing the growth-economic model that caved-in in 2008 (as forecast by UN Secretary-General, U. Thant in 1969), we live in times of a 2-horse race, the one of the galloping progress towards AGI, the other towards the precipice of environmental collapse. According to a recent Guardian newspaper report, almost 50% of the environmental scientists caught up in the IPCC´s activities are unanimous in their despair over the misfortunes of both what is happening and what is not. In these times, there are heavily populated parts of the world where night-time heat is greater than body-temperature, while days approach sauna temperatures; seas dying, some at hot-tub temperatures, and record-breaking levels of CO2 emissions are increasing, not to mention those of other gases, like Methane.
AI is the alpha culprit here! It needs the industries and energy input to power its progress. Our life-style depends on its organising the control and maintenance of the industrial and energy infrastructures that keep the consumer growth of the life-style we have going. In fact the consumer society model has become so intricate that it would collapse without Machine Learning and AI pulling the strings. So, the matter would seem, not to be a question of which horse will get there first (the fulfilment of AGI, or our falling off the precipice of environmental collapse), but of their taking one another down, for the development of AGI needs the pursuit of business as usual, which is exactly what is driving the compounded climatic, oceanic and environmental crises. Here´s the bind! AGI can only get there through environmental destruction and it would seem that environmental destruction will stop AGI in its tracks!
Again, let me say I´m not out to make hard and fast statements about possible outcomes. My point is about being intelligent and taking stock. We´ve got to be able to stand outside ourselves and look in at what we´re doing, at what´s going on, at the implications, the ins-and-outs of the path the frenzy of the entrepreneurs in science and technology has us blindly going down. We´ve got it in us to be more than what their mental fervour disgorges. Yes, it would seem to be too late, with regard to the point we have reached, both with regard to the trajectory of AI´s development and to the ensuing environmental mayhem. Nevertheless, it´s what the consciousness we´re equipped with can do for us. Nay, what it should be doing for us, for it´s never too late to be intelligent about where one is at and what´s going on in the here and now. It´s what is distinctive about the consciousness we´re capable of channelling.
So, who are we really, in the midst of all this? Herein is the incentive to get back on track with regard to the intelligent being it is in us to be. But before I turn to an image/text series exploring this, I´d like to touch on these issues from another angle.
So, there are interviews with humanoid robots that consistently astonish their interviewers. Well, we´ve already alluded to where the information for the informative, concerned, forthright, empathetic, poses they strike has been culled. Yes, indeed, from the plethora of algorithms that fed them, algorithms of every kind, garnering some kind of data or another from the `interests in our privacy´ we have permitted, sources of information on the likes of consumer choices, habits, and such, at one end of the spectrum, to the opinions, views and concerns they ferret out, at the other – stuff that helps a firm target us about its bath salts; social media isolating us in a loop of others like us, only feeding us what want we want to hear; conspiracy theorists concocting evidence for their rumour-mills; hidden players skewing our political views for election purposes, to nations undermining one another´s integrity. Any emotional colour these automata display is part of their programming, manipulated, therefore deceitful and not because they actually feel anything.
That´s generally speaking! At another level there is how Apple, Google, Microsoft, Open AI and others, gather stuff and what they do with it (stuff that has nothing coherent underpinning it), as they each work their own beat, in competitive haste, rather than cooperatively.
There´s yet another dimension to this in which players like China, Russia, the US and others, are not so much competing, as pursuing wildly different agendas. Operating from different premises, entrepreneurial operators in the US pursue a course that is incredibly naive, with regard to AI´s being so all for the good, that they do not pay due attention to the cynicism motivating Russian operatives developing their capacity for interfering to create chaos on behalf of the State, or properly credit the craftiness of China´s turning everything it does and anything it can lay its hands on (like chaos!) to its advantage. Here, one can include `bad (rogue) actors´ like terrorist organisations and criminal operators, subversive of this monolith we call `AI´, for their own purposes.
Alright, back we go, then, to humanoid robots peddling what they hash up from being force-fed from such a mish-mash, pronouncements indiscriminately employing different truths and falsehoods, in what are unanchored hypotheses, each time they do so, with self-styled emotional markers thrown in for effect. Here´s the stupid position we are in, for none of this is a manifestation of intelligence! How thoroughly hood-winked all those gullible interviewers are, and the rest of us, too!
Well, here we have come full circle to how the whole shebang stems from the undisciplined, mental frenzy of, supposedly 'intelligent' major players, seduced, them by AGI's allure and us by them. As readers of the Journal, I am sure there is a variety of informed opinion on these matters. For my part, I have presented a number of avenues of thought that don´t necessarily conform with one another. This why I have, in all due respect, submitted this article purely as a philosophical commentary.
So, let's move on to considerations of the nature of our intelligence as in the image/text series I have for this.