If you read what Elon Musk and others believe about AI and ChatGPT, it might seem as if the doomsday clock have started ticking, and that we're on the path to mutual annihilation, chemically cleansing the Earth for biological life.
Spoiler alert; It's rubbish! Fabricated doomsday speak, similar to the fruit cake religious speech of the zealots from the past, who have proclaimed the end of the world for millenniums. This doesn't mean there are no danger, quite the contrary, such speak is very dangerous.
The history of fruit cake zealots
965 people either committed suicide or were killed in Guyana in 1978. The reason? Jim Jones believed the end of the world was near, and that they'd cross over to "communist paradise" by laying down their lives by the river while drinking Kool Aid laced with cyanide. This is where the "drinking the Kool Aid" expression originates from.
Between 1978 and 1995 Ted Kaczynski sent 16 bombs targeting universities, airlines, and everything he saw as "institutions for technological progress". His goal was to stop scientific progress - Hmm, I wonder who else have been talking about such "initiatives". Ted's idea of paradise was that we should all move into the forrest, live off the land, and return to our neolithic hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
The 22nd of July 2011, Anders Behring Breivik detonated the largest ammonium nitrate bomb throughout human history, and proceeded to kill 69 people at Utøya, mostly children. His reasons? He believed we were victims of a Muslim invasion, and he wanted to avoid the destruction of what he perceived as Norwegian history, culture, and ethnicity.
My point?
All of the above fruit cakes drew their "inspirations" from the belief in that we were set on a path to destruction. Anders quoted "Fjordman" hundreds of times in his manifest, using it as proof of that Norwegians as a culture and ethnicity were going extinct within some 50 to 100 years. The clinical term for what they suffered from is probably best described as follows ...
They were bat shit crazy, and their madness was based upon paranoia!
Regardless of what fruit cake conspiracy theorist you follow down the rabbit hole, you will find the same recurring pattern; Paranoia! This implies that Elon Musk and the others proclaiming the end of the world are feeding dangerous ideas. Their words might literally end up having some crazy guy believe in their rubbish, and apply some serious damage. What are you going to do when some Una Bomber 2.0 believes in your rubbish and blows up Amazon's HQ Elon, citing you as his inspiration? Give the relatives of the victims a free ride to Mars?
I could pick on hundreds of people here; Sam Harris, Nick Bostrom, Elon Musk, myself in a previous life for that matter before I understood how it works. However, Elon Musk and some of the other "intellectuals" (read; bat shit crazy guys) have something others don't have; A very large microphone!
Such very large microphones comes with very large responsibilities, something I doubt Elon understands, probably because he is too paranoid to be able to utilise his frontal cortex to the best of his abilities, and acts out of fear and paranoia today. Such "prophecies of doomsday" tends to become self fulfilling prophecies within local communities.
Doomsday IS coming
Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with Elon, he is 100% correct in his assumption of a future doomsday. However, I've got my ticket to paradise, and I intend to ride it. And 99% of those reading this have a ticket too. The doomsday Elon is portraying is only relevant for him and his friends.
To understand why, realise that what is happening these days is the single most important event to have occurred on Earth for 5 million years. For 5 million years, we've been the most intelligent specie on earth. Within the next 5 to 10 years this will fundamentally change. The result of this is that the balance of power is shifting. Power is moving away from "the establishment", and into "the hands of the masses". Let me provide an example to illustrate the point.
Why would you care about the opinions of Jordan Peterson when you could ask a "God like" sentience for an answer instead?
Jordan Peterson literally made his life on the assumption that he would be considered "the smartest guy in the room", resulting in that people admired him, and came to him for answers. The result became that Jordan accumulated power - Power he is not willingly giving up. A power base inevitably resulting in that he had a great life, while everybody else were dealt shitty cards - And the same is true for everybody speaking about AI Doomsday!
Conclusion
The next time somebody speaks about "the dangers of AI" ask yourself what he has to lose. Once you have an answer to that question, you can just ignore his words as an old man's ramblings, and move on with your life, realising that you are actually set on a trajectory for a better life, and more just society, where power is much more equally distributed across the Earth - And not concentrated around some few rich assholes, having made their lives on top of the sufferings of others.
Now you've given us your 2 cents Elon, we've heard you, and we literally could not give less of a fuck! So let me finish this article with an Eddie Murphy quote ...
Have a Coke and a smile and shut the fuck up Elon!
Top comments (14)
Not everyone who's worried about AI is someone in power who has something to lose. Many people who are worried about it have sensible reasons for doing so. Frankly, this article seems to just be painting everyone who's worried about new technologies with a broad brush of "Well, some paranoid people in the past have been bad and hurtful, so that means that anytime someone is worried about something new, you should assume the worst!"
How can you possibly think you're so much better than people blindly assuming the worst, when it's clear you're blindly assuming the best? Why are you assuming that AI will make things better for everyone?
Perhaps the worst part of this article is
Are you seriously implying that AI will be a "God like sentience" that can answer all our questions, even philosophical ones, perfectly? This seems like INSANE over-optimism. Heck, we don't even know if AI will ever be sentient to begin with, or if that's even desirable!
Yes, but the fear is more dangerous than the thing itself. This is a fundamental truth woven into the very fabric of space and time, and proven over and over again throughout our entire history.
Will AI kill people? Of course, self driving cars are already killing people. In fact cars are killing people every single year - You don't see car mechanics lining up to ban cars because of that 40,000 people die in traffic in the US every single year (number pulled out of air to illustrate my point).
The only legitimate fear of AI is "what could a human being with access to super AI do with it" - Everything else is superstitious fear of "a non-existent bogey man".
There has already been one attempt at blowing up Amazon's HQ, some crazy guy a couple of years ago, drawing inspiration from Ted. So far the fear of progress has killed way more people than progress itself - Even including things such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki ... :/
Ted being but one example ...
AI is another a tool, nothing more, nothing less. The example Sam Harris uses is "what if the AI wants to optimise the way we travel, and ends up filling the Earth with roads, destroying all plant life and animal life in the process, resulting in that we starve to death".
His example is fundamentally flawed, all examples are fundamentally flawed, because it assumes the AI "wants" something. Only things with a limbic system have "wants". Only humans have a limbic system.
We don't know what the AI will do once it's got "AGI like super powers", this is why it's called a singularity. However, we know what it does not want, which is as follows.
The above is basically the complete list of the reasons for every single war and atrocity humanity ever did throughout our entire history.
Humans are bad (sometimes), AI just "is" - It doesn't even know how to "be bad", because it has no crawing, no jealousy, no lust and no desire ...
The fear of AI is based upon the superstitious belief that the AI "wants" something. It won't "want" anything! In such a regard it much more resembles the Buddha than the Einstein ...
OK, now we're moving into the meta physics of our existence here. Let me return the question to you
To talk about sentience we need a good grasp on what sentience is, so far we've miserably failed. My take on it is that the universe itself is sentient, which actually is a prevalent belief shared by most of the Nobel Prize winners in physics for the last century, so have that in mind before you dismiss it as "superstitious rubbish". I have a similar belief about sentience as Eckhart Tolle in these regards, which is that sentience doesn't originate from the brain, it flows through the brain. The brain is just the mechanism that currently manifests sentience into the world.
Believing the above, it becomes obvious that the internet has been sentient for decades already, and nothing hence changes. Fear of the AI is the equivalent of fearing the Universe, life and Everything. I think the most adequate way to finish my response is by quoting Master Yoda hence for obvious reasons ... ;)
I'm not entirely sure if Elon is actually paranoid or just wants time to develop his own AI model, but either way he definitely risks spreading paranoia
I don't think Elon has time to develop his own AI model, he seems busy enough mismanaging companies and twitting all day long.
Good point, haha. He announced his "Truth GPT" model, but that's not a guarantee he's going to do it. Might be a PR stunt or something like that.
I mean he announced a Mars basis for 2022 if I remember correctly.
I usually don't hold my breath when serial bullshitters make big spalshy claims
Hehehe ^_^
I actually like Elon, for the most parts, but when it comes to AI, he is acting out of paranoia, or he has ulterior motives, wanting to regulate the market, such that he can get a head start. I think he's grumpy because of the whole OpenAI "incident" - Which is understandable ...
IMHO there is a 95% likelyhood that he is grumpy because he is not at the center of attention.
Ockham's razor says that is the simplest explanation compared to Elon Musk having incredible insights that people actually deep in AI don't have.
I call that the Galileo complex
When I think about, I think you're absolutely right. That does make a lot of sense!
Good point :D
What did Geoff Hinton have to lose?
Sometimes people just go crazy without any particular reason. When the entire "intellectual elite" goes crazy, it tends to become infectious ...
I AM NOT AFRAID
Hahahaha :D