What happens when humans are no longer smartest?
I recently read "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All" by Eliezer Yudkowsky & Nate Soares. As implied by the title, and as the authors intended, it scares the crap out of me!
"What can I do?" I wondered. As an Information Technology guy, why not start a blog to inform people? So, here you go.
We've been the most intelligent species for some time on our planet. Well, according to "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy," the third most intelligent, after dolphins, and mice, but we're mostly ignorant of our real place in the hierarchy.
Do you know how we treat other species we see as less intelligent? Let me clue you in. Not well!
Even those of us who think of ourselves as fairly benevolent creatures don't bat an eye about swatting a biting mosquito. Ah, spring in Ontario, Canada.
I have a hard time imagining that we'd even register on the radar as sentient beings to an intelligence that could ingest, understand, and make use of all the information about everything we have ever learned in some huge, parallel processing, nearly speed of light learning machine.
It could improve itself or "evolve" at a pace that's unfathomable by humans. An AI developer could get everything set up, set the AI loose to start learning, go home to get some sleep, and return in the morning to something that would be further ahead of her in intelligence than she is relative to an ant.
Massive data centers are being built for the express purpose of creating ever more intelligent AI. The pressure to produce a return on investment will be immense.
I'm not quite sure where this site is going to take you yet, dear reader, but I'm reading another book, "The Coming Wave: AI, Power and Our Future," by Mustafa Suleyman, and will provide more thoughts as I progress through that and links to further resources that can help inform you.
I've come across some sites that can advance our knowledge together.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
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