It does not cease to amaze me how is it possible for people not to want to develop their minds? How is it possible that not everybody rushes to learn NLP so they can form a real critical thinking? How is it possible that the NLP Practitioner and NLP Master Practitioner trainings are not taught in schools? This post reflects the need for people to begin to really pay attention to their minds and get off the couch, but, of course this is possible only if their individual values are allowing them to do so,or not.
I scheduled two more articles in the values series for this week but today I read a rather long article named “The AI Revolution: How Far Away Are Our Robot Overlords?” (see it here) which lead me to write this article, and postpone the two articles in the ˜NLP Values and the Evolution of Consciousness‘ (see here Part 1 and Part 2 of this series) for next week. This article is perfectly suited to this series, since indirectly refers to our individual values and the evolution of our individual consciousness. Although written from the perspective of Values Level (VL) 5 thinking about VL 5 science, I highly recommend you read it in its entirety – it makes for a rather long reading – but it is one of the better written articles about Artificial Intelligence. I hope you have seen the movie Transcendence because it is a good representation of the topics discussed in this article.
Although many issues are simply left out by the writer of this article – which in and of itself denotes a certain values levels (VL) thinking, namely VL5 – and so every concern from VL 6 and 7 are simply not present, it is nevertheless extremely informative.
In the context of human values and the series of articles I have scheduled for next weeks, the article I read today got me thinking. We are at the precipice of either becoming “Godlike” or driving the whole human race into extinction and this in the next 30-50 years.
The technology progresses incredibly fast. In fact it is moving so fast many of us are left in the dustbin of “past times” in terms of our capability of dealing with the future – unless we have a pretty darn good imagination and even so, many of people’s personal old fashioned values will not allow them to evaluate correctly the next 2-3 decades into the future.
Here are some highlights of this article:
“The average rate of advancement between 1985 and 2015 was higher than the rate between 1955 and 1985 ”because the former was a more advanced world ”so much more change happened in the most recent 30 years than in the prior 30.
“Kurzweil suggests that the progress of the entire 20th century would have been achieved in only 20 years at the rate of advancement in the year 2000 ”in other words, by 2000, the rate of progress was five times faster than the average rate of progress during the 20th century. He believes another 20th century’s worth of progress happened between 2000 and 2014 and that another 20th century’s worth of progress will happen by 2021, in only seven years. A couple decades later, he believes a 20th century’s worth of progress will happen multiple times in the same year, and even later, in less than one month. All in all, because of the Law of Accelerating Returns, Kurzweil believes that the 21st century will achieve 1,000 times the progress of the 20th century.”
I hope you really caught the magnitude of this issue. Unfortunately this isn’t science fiction. These are hard core facts in the world of science and in the world today there is a race to the ultimate goal of achieving artificial Super-Intelligence (which is a self-aware AI) who’s “neurons” can compute, oh! What the heck! Let’s say 10 billion times faster than our brains ever could. So what we’re talking about is a new entity with the capability to surpass human beings by leaps and bounds. It is an “intelligence explosion” as the author calls it, where
“, where the smarter a machine gets, the quicker it’s able to increase its own intelligence, until it begins to soar upwards ”a machine might take years to rise from the chimp (level) step to the one above it, but perhaps only hours to jump up a step once it’s on the dark green step two above us, and by the time it’s ten steps above us, it might be jumping up in four-step leaps every second that goes by. Which is why we need to realize that it’s distinctly possible that very shortly after the big news story about the first machine reaching human-level AGI, we might be facing the reality of coexisting on the Earth with something that’s here on the staircase (or maybe a million times higher)”
So the first conclusion is that there is not a chance for us to foresee what a super-intelligence of this nature will do or what the consequences will be for us. We could end up in the positive chance where the self-aware AI will assist us to become immortal (see Ray Kurzweil and 2045 website). But we may end up in a situation where the self-aware super-intelligent AI will decide to exterminate all biological humans on this planet and this could spell the end of the human race.
Secondly is that most people when confronted with this kind of development in science will tend to analyze it emotionally and to humanize the computer (like in the movie Her) forgetting that Self-Aware Super-Intelligent AI would be no more human than your laptop or your phone is. It would be totally foreign to us, however people will tend to relate to it as if it was human, as if it had real emotions and not simulated ones, as if it was your friend, and not a computer. This is a big problem in what a public discussion is concerned since many people below VL 5 lack the ability to dissociate themselves and think cold facts and abstract thoughts – in other words to competently deal with the complex issues arising from such developments. Remember we discussed in our previous articles the importance of the word “complexity” – which makes the main difference between different values levels.
The Sci-Fi movies you see make AI either good or evil, and so they humanize technology which is not human. It does not have morals, it does not think in terms of good or bad – it thinks in terms of programs because it is a machine. It is by definition amoral. But these movies leave people with a false notion of a vague comfort when we challenged by the idea of a human-level or superhuman-level AI.
Just in case you’re wondering if this is an isolated article, daily I read news about just another “extraordinary” discovery in the same ballpark: GRIN technologies (Genetics, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Nanotechnology). I just read this article which proves my point:
Scientists store data inside DNA that could last MILLIONS of years
Now this may mean nothing to you, or you may brush it off as “yet-another-discovery-by-the-nerds-in-the-bioscience-department-why-should-I-care”, I suggest you pay attention. Life is changing all around you, and you’re left behind right now if you don’t keep up with the times.
What the above-mentioned articles tell us is that this IS a completely new world and its development is happening hastily right now, not in some far future. This concerns us all, and we as members of the human race should be (1) informed and (2) involved in the decisions concerning our immediate future. Unfortunately as I mentioned in my previous articles on NLP Values, most members of the human family (at least in the western world) trail along happily eating the slew of synthetic chemicals in fast food, or GMO laden dinners, watching dutifully mind numbing reality shows and sports events designed to numb their minds even further, hopelessly and blissfully unaware as if nothing has or ever will change. I recommend to eat healthy food and try to keep your food as fresh as possible and you feel the difference.
The capacity for critical analysis of the situation described in the article quoted above is directly related to the ability to perform complex and abstract thinking. That is also directly related to how complex one’s consciousness is evolved through the different values levels thinking. In other words the mind has to be capable of this thinking to even begin to have an intelligent appraisal of where we all are as a human race.
Our values are laden with emotional investment. So what would VL 2 think about the articles quoted above – in case it would be interested in even reading them, which is unlikely? Maybe that the magic amulet and the spells performed by the shaman will protect them? They surely will gather together as a family and stay strong.
What about VL 3? Oh, VL 3 would immediately jump at the idea because this is the one chance to (1) live forever and (2) conquer not only the whole world, but the whole solar system, heck, the whole galaxy! VL 3 would be happy to kill with impunity to get their hands on this technology!
VL 4 would say: “If it is the will of God for me to die this way, I will be happy because I lived a righteous life and I will go straight to heaven” (Nirvana, etc). VL 4 will also want to regulate this new field with laws, super-laws, and procedures into oblivion until the bureaucracy will be bigger than any possible development.
VL 5 would observe VL 4’s dogmatic and rigid approach and will do its best to short-circuit it. It will want to definitely be the first to develop the Self-Aware Super-intelligent AI and it will do it secretly because of corporate “trade secrets”; it will want to be the best and control with science everything and everybody. Think of the manipulative economic trades a Super-Intelligent AI can pull? What about mining on the Moon? Or micro-trading or high frequency trading? Oh, I forgot micro-trading is old news – it is already happening for a long time! Of course it is, but you haven’t seen anything yet compared to what’s coming. That would be VL 5.
VL 6 is thinking – but hold on! The mind is not in the machine. Consciousness is not the sum total of human emotions and intelligence. Mind is non-local, why aren’t we taking all these into account. Why are we leaving out the rest of humanity?
And VL 7 will say that human life is not inferior is not irrelevant, that human beings are not “less than” anything, that all life is important, that we should not replace all humans with robots; we could find functional solutions to integrate it all together in a fashion that sustains all forms of life,. but we’ll talk specifically about what VL 7 or 8 when we go back to our series on NLP Values and the Evolution of Consciousness,. Next week!
Until next time, be well.