© TG Daily
"At some point, this century or next, we may well be facing one of the major shifts in human history - perhaps even cosmic history - when intelligence escapes the constraints of biology," says Huw Price, the Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy and one of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER)'s three founders.
"Nature didn't anticipate us, and we in our turn shouldn't take [artificial general intelligence] AGI for granted. We need to take seriously the possibility that there might be a 'Pandora's box' moment with AGI that, if missed, could be disastrous."
While there's little doubt that advances in engineering - from longer life to global networks - have brought great benefits to humanity, Price and his colleagues question whether the acceleration of human technologies will increase our chances of long-term survival - or do the opposite.
The critical point, they say, will come if computers match human capacity to develop their own technologies and start adapting thew world to suit themselves.
"Think how it might be to compete for resources with the dominant species," says Price. "Take gorillas for example - the reason they are going extinct is not because humans are actively hostile towards them, but because we control the environments in ways that suit us, but are detrimental to their survival."
The center says it's signed up luminaries in science, policy, law, risk and computing from across the university and beyond to become advisors.
"The basic philosophy is that we should be taking seriously the fact that we are getting to the point where our technologies have the potential to threaten our own existence - in a way that they simply haven't up to now, in human history," says Price.
"We should be investing a little of our intellectual resources in shifting some probability from bad outcomes to good ones."
Some of the Big ones. Can I get $?
1.) (Human hubris.) "Nature didn't anticipate us, and we in our turn shouldn't take [artificial general intelligence] AGI for granted. We need to take seriously the possibility that there might be a 'Pandora's box' moment with AGI that, if missed, could be disastrous."
How does he know that.? Next time he speaks with her, he ought to inquire if she still adheres to the "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature," slogan.*
2.) Black hole "oops" creation at CERN, you find yourself and cat swirling into enternity.
3.) Self replicating micro machines, (built because. . . to show off?)
4.) "Depleted Uranium," i.e., "D.U." (a/k/a processed and still radioactive U235 less most of its natural u238 isotope (about 00.75% - that's less than 1%) of unseparated U is U238 which, once separated is used to make nukes...) The junk we throw away, in the form of the following.
Realize that "our" militaries argue that they need U235 "D"U for Armor Piercing rounds, has also been used for carpet bombing of land. Why? It's creates a permanent "no go" zone, without having to lay the mines down. The U235 has half-life of 700 M years. So (ignoring the stuff that's gone floating to over where we each are, - see, e.g., the London Increase in Lung Cancers around 2005? and then, theiy either stopped the reports/ or at least classfied them,I don't know the details.) it's damned evil and foolish, and dangerous to even American soldiers, but "our" government doesn't care about the fodder for its mlitary..
Now assume we've put a 10 million pounds of the stuff into Iraq, et all, then, 700M years from now, it will still have 5 M lbs. lying around - along with about 5 M lbs of lead dust, which is also toxic; and then 700 M years later, only 2.5 M lbs. etc. etc. A permanent minefiled. Look at Fallujah. Is it 45%? 75%? of kids born there now have birth defects?
This was first discussed in WWII papers discussing how, if we couldn't get the A bomb to work, we could finely powderize the stuff and use it to to permanently poison the Japanese mainland, et al, and then Korea's 38th Parallel DMZ. I think it's called the Wallace Memo?
R.C.
*For younger folk, and those where the ads weren't saturated, that was from an old margarine ad campaign.
R.C.